


Force of Nature

by Imaginationzkey



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra, Avatar: The Last Airbender, 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia
Genre: Avatar Midoriya Izuku, But imma have fun anyway, Canon, Chi Blocking, How Do I Tag, I accidently killed it, I have no idea what i'm doing btw, I started writing this before all of the stuff about the previous users was revealed in the manga, Izuku is rather OP, No plans for romance but the characters run away from me frequently, Not Beta Read, One For All Quirk is scarily like the Avatar Cycle, Quirks and Bending are different things, Sorry Not Sorry, chi blocking is able to temporarily stop quirks from being utilized, even though people don't quite get it all, what canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-27
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2019-12-18 16:49:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 34,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18253910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Imaginationzkey/pseuds/Imaginationzkey
Summary: The Avatar; a human imbued with the power of the mighty Spirit of Peace, Raava, and granted the ability to wield all four elements. Only the being known as the Avatar could truly stop the thoughtless battle—could stop the cycle of hate. Only they, among the many people, could bring balance.And, after a terrible defeat which effected the world for twenty thousand years, the Avatar Cycle breathed anew.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly, I should not be posting this as I have absolutely no idea just how frequently this will be updated as I have been known to forget something exists because of life and write things very slowly. However, I do have a few chapters typed up because I was on a roll with it for a while and have a very vague idea of where I want to go. So... Here I am, very nervously posting this chapter. (Which is much, much longer than I realized.)
> 
> Enjoy.
> 
> (I hope.)

_Once, many, many, many lifetimes ago, the world was ruled by powers other than quirks. These powers were granted to people by the great spirits and the lion turtles, giving those gifted with them the power to control one of the four great elements: Air, Water, Earth, and Fire._

_The people of Air learned how to harness their powers by watching the ancient beings known as sky bisons, and lived peacefully with nature and spirits in the cloud-shrouded mountaintops. The people of Water learned from the great spirits of Moon and Ocean, Tui and La, who showed the people of Water how to push and pull the water as they settled in the coldest reaches of the world and in dense swamps. The people of Earth learned from the giant badgermoles how to wield the land that they stood upon, becoming as hardy and resistant as it as they spread across all earthy continents. The people of Fire learned from the mighty dragons that lorded over the skies how to use their fire and that it wasn’t merely a tool for destruction as they settled in lands reigned by volcanoes and heat._

_Turmoil wrought the lands with death and destruction as people warred with people and the few great spirits that lingered, hatred and chaos souring their hearts._

_And only the being known as the Avatar could stop the thoughtless battle—stop the cycle of hate. The Avatar; a human imbued with the power of the mighty Spirit of Peace, Raava, and granted the ability to wield all four elements. Only they, among the many people, could bring balance in any of their lives as the Avatar was reborn after each death._

_In each life, the Avatar worked to bring peace between not only the people of the world, but also between people and spirits. During the Avatar’s second Harmonic Convergence, Raava and the Avatar nearly lost, their connection nearly obliterated. However, afterwards, an opportunity for such peace was presented in the form of the Northern and Southern Spirit Portals being left open after the defeat of the Spirit of Chaos, Vaatu. The peace that followed between people and spirits lasted with no major conflict until the next Harmonic Convergence, even if the peace between people refused to settle in properly._

_It was this Harmonic Convergence where the Avatar and Raava failed to defeat a newly reformed Vaatu due to the Avatar’s young age._

_Many, many terrible years followed the defeat as the Avatar narrowly escaped with their life and a wound that burned into their body, mind, and spirit. Once they regained enough strength, the three Spirit Portals were closed by the Avatar that had failed, sealing away not only the weaker spirits of the realm but also many of the special creatures that remained alive for their own protection. Afterwards, the world fell into darkness as Vaatu used his influence to initiate the eradication of all bending on the Earth and reshape the entirety of the world. The Spirit of Chaos intentionally targeted the wounded Avatar. He froze the reincarnation cycle with the chaos-strengthened force of his spirit by trapping the damaged Avatar Spirit deep within the Earth, binding Raava and the spirits of the past Avatars with raw spirit energy._

_The Harmonic Convergence came and went two more times with Vaatu ruling the Earth during that time, doing his best to taint the spirits that had remained in this plane as he let chaos run rampant._

_Regardless of the chaos that screamed across the lands, seas, and skies, humanity began to slowly rebuild itself painfully slowly from nothing, gradually forgetting the past that had rewritten history. Humanity thrived and suffered in equal amounts under Vaatu’s influence as it began to regain its former strength._

_Humans themselves evolved on a fundamental level as something unknown within them strained for the presence of power that spirits granted. And, Raava, as weakened as she was, managed to send out a powerful pulse of light in a desperate attempt to enact change and break the bonds restraining her and the Avatar Spirit. This new step in the evolution, heralded by Raava’s will, became known as quirks. Which led to the ways of heroes and villains that reigns supreme in today’s society._

_All the while, the Harmonic Convergence once again approached._

_But, unknown to all—even Vaatu himself—Raava and the Avatar Spirit escaped after twenty millennia of imprisonment._

_And thus, for the first time in nearly twenty thousand years, the Avatar Cycle breathed anew._

 

<><><>

 

“Wow…” Izuku breathed with wide eyes as he looked up at the man, awe shining in the bright emerald of his irises. Many of the children that had also gathered seemed to agree with him, wide grins on their faces as the story further soaked into their minds. “That was such a good story, sir!”

“Pft, it was just a story.” Another boy in the group scoffed, and Izuku glanced back at the unknown boy. Sitting in the middle of the pack of children that had gathered on the grass before the storyteller, the boy had orange hair and a large underbite that revealed large molars and canines. “As if any of that could have actually happened.”

“You’d be surprised, young man.” The storyteller said sternly, his glasses flashing as he gazed at the boy. “Many stories and legends out there ring with more truth than you could imagine.” For a brief second, Izuku swore that the man looked at him, but he passed it off as a trick of the light and shadows on the man’s face as the reflective sunglasses made it hard to figure out where he was looking. Still he grinned at the man when he fully looked at Izuku kindly. “And thank you for the praise, young one. I’ve been practicing my craft for quite a long time, but it’s still nice to know that someone enjoys my stories.”

“So this Avatar and this Raava…” A girl towards the back of the group hesitantly spoke up, her dark hair oldly standing on end and defying gravity completely. “They’re the heroes of the story and Vaatu is the villain?”

“You are correct.” The man nodded, face crinkling some with a gentle curl of his lips. “Raava is the embodiment of peace—or, as some have said, light. Vaatu is her complete opposite, ruling over chaos, or darkness. They are two equals and opposites that cannot exist without the other, for one will always be reborn in the presence of the other. In truth, Raava is more about balance while Vaatu is more about imbalance. However, I do advise against assuming that light is good and darkness bad, for that is not always the case.”

“Why is that Harmonic Convergence—” Izuku had to suppress a shiver at the feeling of recognition that trickled down his spine like cold dread so he could continue. “—so important in Vaatu and Raava’s fights? Is the outcome of the something that determines something big? What’s that something big? How important is it? Is that something big whether Raava’s Peace or Vaatu’s Chaos is allowed to be in the world?” Izuku forced the words to stop spilling from his mouth.

“Harmonic Convergence is important because, as you guessed, Izuku, Raava and Vaatu’s eternal battle comes to a head during it. Whomever wins the fight determines whether the Earth and the Spirit World go through a period of peace or chaos for the next ten thousand years.” Storyteller-san said, his voice steady in such a way that Izuku barely caught that it was solemn. There was something hauntingly familiar about those words that Izuku found himself nodding along as if he already knew it for a fact.

“Izuku,” the familiar voice of his mother called softly, drawing the boy’s attention to her waving him over, “it’s time to leave.”

“Oh…” Izuku breathed, getting to his feet so he could swiftly make his way to his mother, taking her offered hand without complaint. Another child asked Storyteller-san another question even as Izuku left with his mother.

It wasn’t until much, much later that he realized that he’d never given the man his name.

 

<><><>

 

Izuku wasn't unfamiliar with bullies, nor was he unfamiliar with being the bullied. So when he found himself wandering the forest alone he was, sadly, unsurprised. Recently, since the doctor’s declaration of him being Quirkless, everyone had been treating him differently.

Before, when he shyly raised his hand in class the teacher would call on him every once in a while, but now she pointedly seemed to ignore him. Before, his classmates would happily talk to him without prompting from him, now they barely talked to him and instead talked _about_ him in whispers that he wasn't meant to hear. Before, he didn't ever think about worrying over if someone would treat him oddly or in a mean way, but now…

Now it was almost always on his mind, especially after Kacchan had spat on their friendship.

Well, him walking alone in the forest was proof enough that he was treated meanly since the boys that he had come to play with had left him the first chance they got. They had left him deep in the woods all on his own and without a care that no one else was there. The only thing that kept Izuku from panicking was the fact that the forest was safe and contained no dangerous animals apart from the birds of prey that roosted in the trees.

That didn't stop the crushing feeling in Izuku’s chest or the tears that formed in his eyes as a result. He stopped his trudging walk next to a stream with a sniffle, wiping at the tears that began to spill down his cheeks with increasing speed. Before he knew it, a small sob clawed it's way out of his chest with a gasp, swiftly followed by another until he was hunched over in a crouch, struggling to stop crying and properly breathe.

All that he'd wanted to do was play with his classmates and supposed friends, not get left all alone. He didn't understand why they didn't want to play with him anymore or why everyone treated him so different. Was it because he didn't have a Quirk? Or…

“Or am I broken?” Izuku whimpered to himself, words broken by his tears. “Is that why I don't have a Quirk? Because I'm a broken, useless _Deku_?”

“You're not broken, Izuku.” A soothing baritone voice said softly, reminding Izuku of a peaceful breeze. “You're merely a little different from everyone else.”

Izuku’s head snapped up, wide green eyes locking on the strangely dressed man that was lowering himself into a crouch before him. The man, dressed in orange and yellow clothing had kind gray eyes and a small, slightly grizzled black-brown beard. However, what caught Izuku's attention the most was the pale blue arrow tattoo emblazoned on the skin of the man's bald head. Oddly, his entire body seemed to blur a tiny amount at the edges.

“Wh-who are you?” Izuku squeaked, falling onto his rear and scooting away from the stranger slightly. “H-How do y-you know my name?”

“My name is Aang,” the man smiled kindly and sat down completely. He moved easily despite looking really old. “As for how I know your name, well, I've known you for a long time. Even if this is the first time that we've met.”

Izuku blinked, more than a little confused over what the man had said. He wasn't sure how you could know someone for a long time without meeting them. The only way that he knew how to know someone was to _meet_ them. But… something told him that the man was telling him the truth.

“What are you doing here, Aang-san?” Izuku asked, feeling a little emboldened by the comforting air around the man. Maybe he was right and he _did_ know Izuku; it would explain why he felt so _familiar_.

Aang paused, gray eyes regarding him with a fond sort of amusement as Izuku waited patiently for an answer. Then his lips worked up into a soft smile. “You called me here, Izuku. I am only here because you were asking for help.”

“What?” Izuku’s lips pulled into a small frown, not understanding what the man meant. “How can I call you here, Aang-san? You’re your own person and I can’t make you do anything.” He paused briefly, tilting his head in his confusion. “And I don’t remember calling for anyone.”

Aang’s eyes crinkled slightly, the smile pulling at his lips far more noticeable. “Well, you _did_ call me, Izuku.” Something sad flickered in his eyes. “So, what are you doing out here all on your own?”

“My… My friends left me…” Izuku hesitantly admitted, looking down at the ground as his fingers reached to play with strands of grass. A few strands broke away under his fingers with the crisp feeling of them snapping.

“Why did they leave you?” Aang pressed gently in a voice that Izuku could easily compare to his mother asking him questions. It was more than a little odd to hear such a tone coming from a stranger and being directed at himself, but Izuku didn’t find it bad. When Izuku didn’t answer, Aang said softly, “Izuku? Whatever it is, I promise that I won’t judge you.”

Izuku swallowed, feeling his throat tightening with the threat of more sobs, making him barely able to breathe out, “They left me because I’m Quirkless…”

Aang didn’t respond to the words immediately, and Izuku wilted in on himself in an attempt to shrink. In his own mind, he was retreating as well even while his thoughts spun. _He hates me now. I know it. He hates me too; because I’m quirkless._

The next thing that Izuku knew, firm arms were gingerly wrapping around him soothingly to pull him into a lap. It wasn’t until slightly calloused hands brushed at his cheeks did he realize that he was crying. Regardless, Izuku sank into the hug from Aang despite the fact that the man was a complete stranger— _no, not a stranger,_ some part of him whispered, _familiar, he’s familiar and safe and trustworthy_. It took another few minutes before Izuku was able to stop crying, but he continued to lean into Aang’s body, idly concentrating on the not-warmth that radiated—

Izuku’s mind faltered.

Despite only having a scant five years of life under his belt, Izuku already had a startling level of intelligence for someone his age and knew an equally startling number of things—most of them about heroes. He knew that basically all people had heartbeats, breathed, and produced some level of warmth from their bodies. Only... Aang didn’t meet any of those criteria. He didn’t have a heartbeat, didn’t breathe even though he could talk, and he had a strange lack of physical temperature that made no sense.

Izuku knew that he should be freaking out about the observation, but he _couldn’t_. While Aang didn’t have a heartbeat something seemed to pulse in him like one in a comforting rhythm that was soothing in a way that Izuku couldn’t place. That something also seemed to double for his breathing and heat as well, as it swelled and ebbed like breath as it radiated a not-warmth that reached past Izuku’s skin to warm him up gently.

It was simultaneously the most unnerving and comforting thing that Izuku had come across in his five years of life.

And it was so familiar that it made something within him _ache_ and _reach_ and _calm_.

“It’s alright that you’re Quirkless.” Aang interrupted the whirlwind that was within Izuku’s head. “Technically, I am too.” Bright green eyes bolted up to Aang’s face, the man offering him a bright smile. “But that doesn’t mean that you don’t have power.”

“You are?” Izuku’s voice was small, surprise plastered on his face. “And how can I have power? I don’t have a quirk.”

“Long, long before quirks, there was another form of power, one that has been all but lost to time. Some people used to be able to control the four classical elements. Those people used to be known as Benders.” Aang explained, gently nudging Izuku from his lap. “And, even before that, some people knew how to bend the energy within their very body to utilize it in the most efficient way possible.”

Something niggled at Izuku’s memory, a story that he had heard drifting to the forefront of his mind. “Like the story that Storyteller-san told us at the park. The one about a peace spirit and a chaos spirit and an avatar.”

“Exactly, Izuku.” Aang nodded, gesturing to Izuku to follow him with a hand. The boy scrambled to his feet, scurrying after the man that was walking towards the stream. “Put your hands in the water until they touch the stream bed.”

“Um… Okay?” Izuku blinked and did as Aang said, settling on his knees so he could press his hands to the pebbled bottom of the stream. Cool water swirled around his wrists.

“Now close your eyes.” Izuku gave him a strange look before he once again followed the instruction. “Now, I want you too just feel, Izuku.”

“What am I supposed to feel?” He asked in confusion, digging his fingers into the pebbles. “The pebbles?”

“Feel the pebbles and the earth beneath them. The heartbeat of the soil. The way the water ripples around your hands to swirl away. The tug and press of the breeze as it blows. The warmth of the sun on your skin.” Aang instructed gently, and Izuku sensed the man settle next to him almost soundlessly. Soon enough, Izuku sensed large hands press into his own, a glowing light flaring bright enough that Izuku could pick it up through his closed eyes. “Feel your connection to them all: the air, the water, the earth, and the fire. Feel them all and embrace the connection.”

Izuku shivered as something warm threaded into his hands, filling his body with something _ancient_ and, with a startling clarity, he felt it when his senses seemed to _click_. He could feel the stark heat of the sun breaking through the leaves above him in dapples of light that warmed him and soothed a fire that he hadn’t realized was within his stomach and chest. He could feel the playful and light dancing of the wind skimming through the trees, rustling leaves with a light caress as it eddied in previously invisible streams. He could feel the gentle flow of the water, cool and calm against his skin as it worked around his hands easily in a supple movement. He could feel the thrumming heartbeat of the earth past the pebbles, comforting and strong and unyielding beneath him.

“I… I feel them.” Izuku breathed in awed surprise, only just managing to keep his eyes closed. He felt as if he were seeing and feeling for the first time in his life. He was also afraid that opening his eyes would break the connections that he had just discovered— _no, rediscovered, they felt too familiar and like an extension of himself now that he was aware of them for this to be the first time he had connected with them._ “I feel them.”

“Good. Very good, Izuku” Aang said, and large hands gently squeezed his much smaller ones.

A bright and blinding warmth burned through Izuku’s veins and he gasped at the feeling, eyes flying open at the new sensation. Unknown to him, his eyes flashed with light for a split instant before the sensation left him breathing shakily on the bank of the stream. It took him a long few moments to recenter himself and realize that he was alone. Startled, he surged to his feet, aware of the air around him being disturbed from the action.

“Aang-san?” He called, a slight tremble in his voice. There was no way that a full grown man could have just disappeared like that, was there? “Aang-san? Where’d you go?”

 _Accept them, for they are just as much a part of you as I am._ Izuku nearly jumped at the ghosting of words that seemed to resonated and echo within him in Aang’s voice. While it was odd, he found that he wasn’t scared for the words that he was saying seemed to be right. _However, I must warn you, accepting them fully will be difficult and bring attention to you, but I know that you’ll be able to handle it for I have faith in you, Izuku. Afterall, we’ve done this many times before._

A bright and peaceful energy seemed to whirl within Izuku for a moment, stealing his breath when the timelessly ancient feeling that he had sensed from Aang filled him. It didn’t hurt or feel uncomfortable as it greeted him. Instead, Izuku compared it to a hug that was welcoming and happy. It was something that calmed him and he welcomed it in its entirety on instinct for the few seconds that it lasted.

With the remnants of the energy still buzzing within him and the new revelation that he could feel so much more of the world in a way that he had never thought possible, he left the forest with a lighter heart. What had happened was enough for him to forget why he had been crying before and that he was Quirkless for the moment.

He had discovered that, despite all of the odds, he had power that he hadn’t even known that he had. He had a power that reached into the world in an unfamiliar-familiar way, allowing him to connect with his surroundings in a way that made a part of him sing. So he would learn to harness this power and turn it into a force for good however he could.

Aang believed in him and he couldn’t let him down.

He just had to figure out what to tell his mom.

 

<><><>

 

Izuku never told his mom about his discovery, some small part of him inexplicably shying away from the thought of telling her even though he knew that he should. There really was no reason not to, but it didn’t stop Izuku from not telling her. The only reason that he could come up with was that he didn’t want to try to explain to her why he suddenly had an ability—even if he wasn’t so sure as to what that ability was.

Sure, he had a non-active Alpha Plus gene and the extra joints in his little toes, which decreased his chance of ever getting a quirk to nearly zero. But him having a quirk wasn’t impossible. Given a freak accident that contained the right circumstances and enough stress, he very well could manifest a quirk. It was about a one in every five hundred million chance, but he still had a chance.

He admitted that keeping the secret wasn’t a very heroic thing to do, but he also found himself wary about admitting to having an ability that wasn’t a quirk. The wariness was such a deeply seated thing that he wasn’t sure where it originated from, just that he felt it. So he followed it and never said a words about his newfound abilities to anyone.

When his classmates picked on him for being quirkless, he paid them little mind and concentrated on his academics. Until he could figure out just what he could do with his powers, he needed to train his mind so he could perform better in a fight as well as try to solve what he can do.

Even when Kacchan bullied him, he found that he wasn’t as put off now. While the bullying hurt in more ways than just the bruises and slight burns that he got, Izuku found that it was now somehow easier to bear—but not by much. It was almost as if he wasn’t alone and there was someone always with him, as if Aang’s words had helped him to better realize that a person was more than their quirk. That constant, not-there presence made the taunts of Deku that much easier to handle because he knew that he wasn’t actually worthless.

It wasn’t until he was in the forest again that he finally figured out a tiny fraction of just what those connections that he felt meant and could possibly do.

Izuku felt the tears slipping down his cheeks as he cradled his hands close while walking to the bank of his stream without actually holding them to his stomach. Kacchan had found him near the entrance of the forest as he had been heading towards the stream to practice feeling everything again. Izuku wasn’t sure what he did, but the next thing that he had known, Kacchan had shoved him down. Kacchan’s hands had flashed with a small explosion that had caught on Izuku’s hastily put up forearms, leaving small burns. Izuku had fled after that, rushing deeper into the forest as fast as he could in an effort to get to the stream. Thankfully, Kacchan hadn’t followed.

Izuku remembered his mom telling him that cold water was good for burns, so he dropped to his knees and shoved his hands into the stream. The cool water stung against the tiny burns, making him whimper and realize belatedly that the water wasn’t exactly clean. Germs were bad too and could get him sick if they got into the burns. He pulled his hands—

_His hand, more darkly-skinned and larger than what he was used to, made a graceful movement as he felt a connection tug at the bucket of water nearby. The water lifted into the air and surrounded his hand, which was swiftly joined by his other hand. His eyes dropped to the bright burn splayed across his thigh, the pain pulsing in the wound with his heartbeat. With a grimace, he lowered his water coated hands to his leg, biting back the sound of pain that wanted to escape him at the contact._

Calm. _He thought. He forcibly relaxed his body then reached into his own energy and pushed it into the water with a strange pull-push. The water lit up with a soothing pale blue light. Almost instantly, the burn and the pain began to disappear beneath the light-infused water until it finally disappeared, leaving behind nothing but unblemished skin as the light faded._

—and promptly froze.

The world seemed to whirl for a few heartbeats, leaving Izuku to try and reel himself back into his surroundings.

He had no idea what had just happened. Some tiny voice at the back of his mind told him that it was a memory of some sort, but he had no idea where it had come from since he had never experienced it. It was almost as if someone else’s memory had been bled into his mind, forcing him to see and experience it as if it was his own memory.

How had that happened? There wasn’t someone with a telepathic quirk somewhere nearby, was there? Even if there was, how could the style of the clothes that the person in the memory had been wearing be explained? He didn’t recognize the green clothes at all past the damage that some sort of flame had done to them. So why would—

Izuku’s thoughts slowed to an almost dead stop, his green eyes looking at his hands as he ran back through the sensations that had been in the memory in regards to water. The person in the memory had been able to control water and heal with it by using their own energy. But they also had some sort of connection with the water—a connection that he realized was eerily similar to the one that he had.

“Could… Could I do it too?” Izuku mumbled thoughtfully, staring at his still submerged hands. “Can I control water? Can I heal with it?”

Izuku closed his eyes in concentration, focusing on his connection with the water over all of his other connections. He waited until the connection practically overwhelmed his senses before he reached within himself in search of that energy that he had felt in that not-memory. It took a few moments before he properly managed to find it and grasp it, and it was a whole other process to pull-push it into the water. As soon as he managed to do so, there was an almost instantaneous relief to the burns on his hands.

Emerald eyes shot open, him barely able to keep his concentration in his surprise as he took in the bright glow of the immediate water around his hands. It lasted a few short seconds before all remnants of pain faded into nothing. Almost as soon as the pain disappeared, the light followed, leaving unblemished skin where there had once been pink burns.

“Whoa…” Izuku breathed, pulling his hands from the water in awe. He stared at them with wide eyes, not completely understanding how what had just happened had just happened. All that he knew was that it did.

His mind shifted back to how the not-memory had used the connection with the water to make it move on top of using it to heal. He had just used his same connection that he had with water to do copy the not-memory. But his connection with water wasn’t his only connection…

“Does that mean that I can make water, earth, fire, and air move by using my connections with them?” Izuku pondered, still looking at his hands as if they held the secrets of the universe. He swallowed, a spark of excitement flickering to life inside him. “Only one way to find out…”

Izuku once more concentrated on the water flowing past him in the stream, focusing on the connection that he had with it once more. It came to the forefront of his concentration much faster this time with a strange sense of the stream flowing even though he wasn’t actually feeling it against his skin. With a nervous tension building within him, he tugged at the connection, moving both hands up in a motion that brought an impression of familiarity at the back of his mind.

A thin stream of water lifted into the air, and his hands almost instinctively began to move, cutting the stream off and twisting it into a ball of floating water as his hands kept waving in as smooth of movements as he could get. With each movement, he could feel his connection to the water shifting it back into place so it remained an orb. He could feel each of his pulls fighting against the pull of gravity.

“I did it… I did it!” Izuku exclaimed and found himself being splashed with water as his control slipped, the ball splashing back into the stream. He blinked, the grin flashing back onto his face from where it had slipped away in the surprise of getting splashed. “Haha! I did it! Now let’s try the earth!”

Izuku’s grinned remained on his face even as he reached into the stream to pluck up a pebble. Now that he had a vague idea of what to do, he reached for his connection with the earth and used it to find the pebble. It took longer than it did with the water, but as soon as he found it, he willed it to rise from his palm, eyes narrowed.

Only nothing happened.

The grin on Izuku’s face slipped into something that was far closer to a frown. He tried to make the pebble move, tentatively pushing at it. It didn’t even quiver in his palm, the pebble resisting his attempts with a resolute shoving sensation in return.

What? What was he doing—

_“The key to earthbending is your stance, you’ve got to be steady and strong. Rock is a stubborn element. If you’re going to move it, you’ve got to be like a rock yourself.”_

—wrong…?

Izuku shivered at the flicker of a remembered voice echoing in his ears, the voice making his heart pang with a happy sort of sadness. He gazed at the pebble that he was still holding, rolling the words around in his head contemplatively despite the fact that he didn’t recognize them. Regardless, he used the new information to reevaluate how he was approaching the situation.

 _So I need to be like a rock and be unmoving and stubborn._ He thought, narrowing his eyes as he slid his feet slightly further apart from each other. _Okay. I think I can do that._

Izuku took a deep breath as he put all of his focus on the pebble, pouring every ounce of will into making himself as immovable as possible. He imagined his feet were anchored to the ground that he was standing on, making his entire body as hard to move as the earth itself. Then, with that feeling of unyielding resolve filling him to the brim, he shoved at the pebble mentally, willing it to rise from his hand.

Before his very eyes, he saw said pebble lift from his hand to hover above it steadily until he let his will seep away so it could land back in it’s starting point.

“Earthbending? Is that what I’m trying to do is called? Does that mean that me moving the water is waterbending. And that moving air is airbending and then moving fire is firebending?” Izuku wondered aloud, gently tossing the pebble back into the stream. “But… I thought bending was just a story that Storyteller-san made up or something… If not, then how can I bend four things? Aren’t people only supposed to be able to bend one?”

 _But the Avatar was able to bend all four elements,_ a tiny voice at the back of Izuku’s mind seemed to whisper, _and, if bending is real, then it stands to reason that the Avatar is as well. And the Avatar was the only person that could bend all four elements._

Something in Izuku shrunk away from that idea, not too sure how to feel about such a responsibility. Not to mention the fact that there was such a miniscule chance that it could be true…

 _You’re lying to yourself…_ That voice whispered, and this time it seemed to sound like Aang, but with the comforting timbre of a woman tangling neatly with his baritone voice. _You’re a smart kid, Izuku. You know what this means. Denying it will only make it that much harder on you in the long run._

Izuku shivered, able to see the truth in the words despite only being five. He shut his eyes, hands curling into fists. His mind settled on a solution. “I’ll see if I can bend air and fire. If I can, then I’ll talk to Storyteller-san the next time that I see him in the park.”

 

<><><>

 

Izuku twisted the very air to his will, the connection whirling freely in an invisible, weak whirlpool above him when he spun his hands above his head. Fire had flickered to life in his palms, pulsing in time with his heartbeat as he cradled it, enraptured by the orange flames that didn’t touch his skin and grew and shrunk a small amount with each inhale and exhale respectively.

Izuku was jittery when he went home, knowing that he had somehow stumbled across something that was life-changing—if not world-changing.

He sought Storyteller-san out the very next day, and, when he didn’t find him, he sought him out the next and the next and a whole slew of next days.

So many days passed that his sixth birthday came and went.

Then Izuku finally found him.

 

<><><>

 

It was raining when Izuku happened to see Storyteller-san on his way home, All Might themed rain boots splashing through puddles. He jumped into puddles as he walked, grinning and scattering water further than it should go by subtly controlling it. The few adults that passed him shot him amused glances at his actions, not quite understanding just how much he enjoyed rainy days.

Rain meant that Kacchan wouldn’t attack him after school because his explosions didn’t ignite properly in the rain, so Izuku could take his time getting home. Plus, most of his classmates hurried home so they wouldn’t get wet whereas Izuku would purposefully make sure that he brought all of his rain gear so he could enjoy the rain—not that he couldn’t carefully bend the water from his clothes given the time. There was also the added benefit that he was surrounded by _water_ , making his connection with water sing in happiness.

So caught up in making sure that he sloshed through the puddles, Izuku nearly missed the man that was calmly sitting at a bus stop, the cover over the bench protecting him from the rain. It was the sensation of something crawling up Izuku’s spine that had him look up, green eyes peering around him, finding himself suddenly wary for a reason that he couldn’t identify. His roving eyes finally stopped on the man that was sitting at the bus stop, still wearing his signature wrap-around sunglasses. Despite the fact that his eyes were hidden behind the reflective plastic, Izuku knew that the man was looking at him.

Izuku froze, his mind faltering at the realization that the man that he had been looking for was right there. Then he was moving without even properly realizing that he had made the decision to move. He didn’t dare to glance away, his feet carrying him towards the nearest crosswalk. After what felt like an eternity, he rushed across the crosswalk, scurrying underneath the protective shelter of the bus stop.

“Storyteller-san…” He practically gasped, something compelling him to offer the man a small bow, hands fluttering by his sides as if they wanted to move. When he straightened, the man’s mouth was twisted up with a small smile. “I… I have a few questions that I’d like to ask you; questions about your stories.”

“Ah, I was expecting this,” the man patted the bench right next to him, “sit next to me, young man. I’m sure that you have a lot of questions.”

“Yes, I do…” Izuku nodded and sat, suddenly finding himself hit with a bout of shyness. He looked at his hands, twining his fingers together. “I wanted to know more about the stories that you told about the Avatar. I… I wanted to know if they were real.” Izuku turned imploring green eyes up at the man sitting next to him. “And if the control of earth, fire, air, and water that you mentioned in your stories was merely something to do with quirks.”

“I think that you already know the answer to those questions, Izuku.” Storyteller-san said gently, settling more comfortably in his seat. Izuku swallowed thickly, feeling as if something heavy had settled in his stomach. “While it is true that bending the elements can appear to be similar to quirks, bending is nothing like quirks, not really. Bending incorporates utilizing the energy within oneself to connect with their surroundings and the energy that is there with some forms of bending utilizing this connection in more obvious ways than the others. Quirks are merely physical abilities that were gifted to humans by Raava’s manipulation in an effort to try to regain some sort of balance in the world.

“And, as for if the stories are real…” Storyteller-san smiled widely—almost too widely in a way that nearly had Izuku scooting away.

Storyteller-san lowered his head and lifted his sunglasses from where they rested on his nose. He revealed eyes that were timeless and _burned_ —

_Lifetime after lifetime. Year after year. Millenia spent recording everything and nothing. Every rise; every fall. Every light; every darkness. Every instance of chaos; every instance of peace._

_Every Avatar that was born and then the many, many, many years in which the cycle was broken..._

_All of it was recorded and kept safe._

_For it was the duty that had been granted to them through merely existing._

_It was their purpose._

—and Izuku tore his gaze away, trembling suddenly with a strange surge of energy. With a shaky breath, he tried to stop the trembling, pushing his focus to the rain pattering softly around them in a soothing white noise. It took a good five minute before he was able to partially compose himself.

“Nuska…” Izuku breathed out finally, hesitantly raising his eyes back to the man at the name that fell from his lips unbidden. He half expected to meet burning eyes set in a form that he instinctively recognized as not human despite the current human appearance. Instead, he found his own reflection looking back at him with startled, too-old eyes. “You’re Nuska, the spirit of recording and watching with the eyes of timeless fire.”

“That I am, Izuku.” Nuska nodded. “That is why I know about all that I told you. I have lived it through much and carry the burden of knowledge. It is why Vaatu has taken an unholy interest in me despite the Blessing of Raava granted to me by your predecessor.”

Izuku’s head ached at the words, as if he was trying to remember something important which involved light and warmth and many overlapping voices saying, _“May my Blessing protect you from falling into Chaos.”_ He had to forcefully shove the pressure in his head away. He refocused on Nuska and his words.

“My…” Izuku’s face blanched, and he frantically shook his head. “I can’t. I can’t be the—there’s no way I can be—”

“Do not fight yourself or the truth, Izuku, it will do you no good in the end.” Nuska cautioned in a serious tone. “All that you will accomplish if you do so is harming yourself in the end by creating an imbalance within your energy. An imbalance that you cannot afford at the moment—not with Harmonic Convergence and Vaatu on the horizon.”

“But… I… Even if I… How can I…” Izuku fumbled on his own words, feeling fear creeping up his throat and crushing his chest at the possibility of it all being true. He was only six. How could he managed to even do anything? He was young and had no training and no one to train him. Even if he _was_ the Avatar, how could he do it? “I _can’t_ , Nuska-san. I can’t do it. I’m just me.”

Nuska laughed, the sound drowned out by the rush of the bus coming by, water softly spraying up from underneath black tires. Nuska got to his feet so he could stand before Izuku, hands on both of the boy’s shoulders. Behind his glasses, his eyes flared bright enough to partially leak light across his face.

“You can do it, Izuku, for you are not alone. You have not only Raava with you, but also all of your many, many past lives to help you. Not to mention the more powerful spirits that didn’t leave this realm.” Nuska pulled away, a strange sense of peace settling within Izuku at his words in a swell of warmth. “Also, I believe in you. May the light of Raava guide you, young Avatar.”

With that, Nuska seemed to disappear into thin air as the bus rolled away, leaving Izuku sitting under the cover of the stop all alone with his thoughts and the newfound weight of the world on his small shoulders.

 

<><><>

 

A week later found Izuku sitting on the bank by his stream, hunched over the tiny flame that he had cupped between his hands. The orange flame curled and flickered warmly, pulsing like a heartbeat against his hands. It was soothing and calming as he let his entire focus lock on the flame.

He would rather not think about how he had been off all week from the revelation that Nuska had given him. The worst part had been that he had been off enough that his mother had noticed and been worried. But it wasn’t as if he could talk to her about what was troubling him. There was no way that she would believe him, and, even if she did, what would that change.

He had powers that he didn’t even understand and had no idea how to learn how to understand them.

“You’re much better at that than I was.” Izuku nearly shrieked at the voice, losing control over the flame that he was holding as he jolted to his feet without thinking. Fire flared dangerously from his palm, and he hastily tamped down on the output until it was gone, surprised by the amount of orange flame that had flared from his hand—since when could he produce that much fire? The owner of the voice laughed slightly as Izuku looked at him, “Or not.”

The boy that gazed back at him wasn’t even ten years older than Izuku, his bright blue eyes shining with mirth. He was dressed in cleanly cut blue clothing, white accents marking his clothes neatly in a way that seemed more traditional than what Izuku was used to. His dark hair, pulled back into a ponytail of some sort, matched well with his dark skin. The white ornament decorating the blue and white cloth that was holding his hair back was finely carved.

All in all, he wasn’t much older than Izuku, not even in his teenage years.

“I… Who are you?” Izuku asked curiously, cautiously. Just because him meeting Aang hadn’t been a bad thing didn’t mean that this other boy wasn’t dangerous.

“My name’s Iluq, it’s nice to meet you, Izuku.”

This boy knew his name.

This boy knew his name _without him giving it._

Izuku swallowed. “Are… Are you like Aang?”

“Yes.” Iluq nodded slowly, a cautious expression appearing on his face. “However, I came here to tell you something. Something important.” Iluq gestured for Izuku to sit. Izuku did so slowly. “You’ve been panicking over what Nuska told you and how you’re going to learn how to harness your bending.”

“Y-yes, I don’t know how I’m going to learn how to use it since there’s no one here who can teach me.” Izuku’s voice quaked with fear and uncertainty. “I’m worried that I won’t be able to learn it quickly enough.”

“But there’s no need to worry about a teacher.” Iluq reassured, face shifting with a comforting grin. “After all, you have us.”

“Us?”

“All of the past Avatars. You can call on us for help—something that you seem to have already gotten down on a subconscious level.” Iluq leaned forwards, bearing his elbows onto his knees. His blue eyes were calm and reassuring despite the youthful features that surrounded them. “All that you have to do is reach inside yourself to find those connections and call upon them. One of your predecessors will answer the call.”

“Does…” Izuku faltered, finding the new information that he had been given strange and slightly off-putting in an oddly comforting way. “Does that mean that they can teach me if I call on them?”

“Yes, they can teach you. But they can only teach you the theories, nothing else. The rest is up to you.” Iluq’s grin softened into a caring smile, a hand reaching out to ruffle Izuku’s green-black hair. “Now, I’ve got to go, but I suggest that you get to work on meditating and trying to connect with the others. It’s probably best if you start with earth as it’s your representative element. Traditionally, you would follow that with fire, then air, and finally water, but as you have a strange affinity with water… Tradition might be able to be flexible enough for you to at least learn how to properly heal, even if it’s not in the proper order. The conditions that you’re in right now are not very favorable to you, but knowing how to heal should greatly help.”

“I… Okay…” Izuku nodded, taking the older boy’s advice to heart. Before his very eyes, Iluq began to fade. “Thank you, Iluq-kun…”

The last impression that Izuku gained from Iluq was the flash of teeth that signified a blinding grin.

 

<><><>

 

It took a full month before Izuku figured out how to meditate and call on a woman named Avani. She had calmly looked at him when he startled slightly at finding her pale blue spirit suddenly in front of him. Despite his astonishment over the fact that Avani was apparently his past life—and a _girl_ —Izuku settled in to learn from her.

It was surprisingly grueling work, made more difficult by his need for secrecy. Most days his limbs were sore when he finished, Avani fading until he needed her again. But, despite how hard it was, Avani taught him many things.

He learned how to better control the earth as well as become one with it in order to withstand attacks. He learned how to sense things within a few meters of himself through his feet, forcing himself to hone it enough so he could feel his surroundings through his shoes. He learned how to wait and then respond in a fierce and decisive attack. He learned the basics of how to bend metal, to sense the impurities in it and use that to his advantage so he could warp steel to his will. He learned how to take rock and super charge it with heat, turning even the smallest pebble into a molten hot weapon by reverting it to lava—even if he wasn’t very good at it.

Most importantly, he learned how to weather harsh blows much like the rocks that he wielded despite the fact that Avani couldn’t physically fight him. It was a skill that he put to use when he was bullied at school. Which had the unfortunate side-effect of infuriating Kacchan more than normal.

But the tiny bruises, scrapes, and occasional burns that he got were the perfect way for him to practice the healing that Iluq was teaching him. Well, Iluq and a to-the-point woman named Korra—who had apparently been trained by one of the best waterbending healers of all time. On top of his earthbending training, it left him tired mentally and physically even if it left him feeling accomplished.

He was surprised when, after two and a half years, Avani said that he had very little left to learn at the stage that he was at due to him not being able to use his bending against an actual opponent that could fight back. Avani instructed him to connect with either her successor or some other firebender before she flickered away in the familiar rush of pale blue energy.

Which led him to seeking out Haru when he was eight, a firebender with a large, thin scar stretching from his left ear, partially across his face in a curve that nearly caught his eye, and then down under the neck of his clothes. Izuku didn’t ask about it, and instead let the man teach him how to harness his fire. It was a difficult task, made that much harder by the fact that he was in a forest that he really didn’t want to accidentally burn down. But, somehow, he managed.

He learned that fire was just as much a force of destruction as it was a force for life. He learned that fire was volatile and could very easily hurt its bender if they got careless. He learned that control—mind, body, spirit, and breath—was key for limiting damage. He learned that the flickering heartbeat of a flame as it breathed with him was soothing in its simplicity.

He was surprised when, after another two years, that Haru determined that Izuku was adequately trained in how to harness his fire. He pointedly made sure that Izuku knew that he wasn’t anywhere near complete in his training, just that he wasn’t a walking time bomb anymore now that he could control it. There was also a very hesitant instruction on how to redirect lightning of all things, one which had resulted in Haru squeezing out a promise from Izuku to only use it if things went south. He had accepted the promise with little complaint, trusting that Haru knew best in regards to firebending.

By this point, Korra had taken over his healing training with a startling level of vigor that was tempered by her kindness. Much of it unfortunately involved him having to delve into the memories that she presented him, but he now felt as if he could actually do something with his healing now. Sure, he hadn’t actually healed anyone other than himself yet, but that didn’t mean that he didn’t know how.

Next, he called on an airbender woman by the name of Rinzen. He had only just started to learn the most basic of forms at ten when he went to his first Hero Expo. It was there that he unknowingly changed things with a simple act of kindness, disguising his waterbending as a quirk, and being unable to just not do anything to help someone obviously in need.

 

<><><>

 

Izuku was nearly vibrating in suppressed excitement, and it took more effort than he cared to admit not to let his seismic sense pierce through his shoes. He knew better than to do that in such a crowded area with this many people in his newly-extended three meter range as he would be overwhelmed in a heartbeat. This was his very first Hero Expo, and it was obvious in the way that he looked around with an eagerness that nearly made his eyes glow despite the fact that he was wearing goggles meant to imitate Eraserhead’s own goggles. Combined with his Silver Age All Might hoodie it probably looked slightly odd, but he didn’t particularly care.

Especially since he had managed to lose his mom in the crowd.

The fact that he wasn’t scared like most children had to do with the fact that he knew that he was completely safe in this particular setting. And, even if he wasn’t, he was about fifty percent certain that he would be able to fend off any potential threats with his bending just enough to get away or draw attention. So, with a calm head, he did the only reasonable thing that he could currently think of: gain the high ground so he could have a chance to see over the sea of people.

Which led him to carefully climbing onto one of the benches that were set about, balancing carefully on the back of the bench so he could gain a better vantage point. He thanked Haru and Rinzen for the balance training that he had so far received. Otherwise he would probably have fallen by this point.

 _All that I need to do is either locate mom or the security desk. Or maybe I should find a security guard? Or I could see if I can locate one of the more personable heroes that are at their booth…? Or—oh, that guy’s tall._ Izuku’s thought derailed with a blink as his gaze landed on a rather nondescript looking blonde man. He looked a little weary, which was accented by the heavy bags under his eyes and his slightly sunken cheeks. And, despite his thin frame, he moved in a way that was both nervous and assured, as if he knew how to handle himself. The fact that his eyes seemed to take in everything yet nothing around him was surprising. _Is he a retired Pro? That would explain the situational awareness—and now he’s coming towards me. Oops, I was staring._

“Young man, it’s not safe to stand on the bench that way.” The man said in a deep voice that was both soothing and reprimanding. Now that he was close enough, Izuku noted that his sky blue eyes looked more of an electric color with the way that they too were sunken in his face. Concern flitted across the man’s face, those same stunningly bright eyes flashing around, roving over the crowd in a practiced way. “Where are your parents?”

“I kinda got separated from my mom,” Izuku admitted, not budging from where he balanced so he could remain as close to the man’s ridiculous height as possible. “I got up here so I could hopefully either see her; see where the security desk might be; or maybe find a security guard.”

“Mmmm, that doesn’t change the fact that standing up there is dangerous.” The man hummed contemplatively.

“Wouldn’t it be down there?” Izuku’s mouth ran ahead of him, and he immediately flushed brightly, knowing that the goggles that he wore wouldn’t completely hide it. Embarrassed, he looked down, resisting the urge to shift his weight too much even though he intentionally swayed to the right steadily. Izuku sensed more than saw the man prepare to catch him in case he fell. “Uh, I mean, because you’re so tall…”

Unexpectedly, the man chuckled after a moment, the sound almost lost in the noise of the crowd around them. “Well, you are not wrong, young man.” Izuku peeked up at the man from behind his goggles. “Now, I do commend you for keeping your wits about you, but standing on the back of the bench like that isn’t safe; you may fall. If you need to find the security desk, I know where that is and can help you there.”

Swiftly and assured of his own balance, Izuku plopped himself onto the narrow seating that was the backrest of the bench—if he subtly used airbending to better keep his balance, no one would ever know. The man’s hand twitched with the sharp and sudden movement, as if expecting Izuku to fall. Izuku had to resist the urge to smile, and channeled that energy into twisting his feet slightly in calm, repetitive movements.

“Mom said not to go with strangers, sir.” Izuku said rather plainly, cocking his head to the side. He watched the man’s face flicker with an strange mix of amusement, approval, and surprise. But there was something else about this man, something that screamed reassurance and safety in a way that his slightly haunted appearance contradicted. “But there’s something about you that screams nice, so okay.” Izuku offered a giant smile at the surprise that very clearly crossed the man’s face, jumping down from the bench completely. “So where are we going, mister?”

“Uh…” The man blinked at him, recovering quickly from the turnaround. He gestured in a direction that Izuku hadn’t been in yet. “That way. The security desk is in that direction.”

“Alright!” Izuku chirped, not even hesitating to snag the man’s hand and gently tugging him in that direction. The man’s hand was proportioned to fit his height, and dwarfed Izuku’s own just as easily as he towered over the majority of the people in the crowd around them. “My name’s Izuku! What’s your’s?”

“You can call me Yagi.” Yagi said after a moment of pause, easily keeping pace with Izuku as he shortened his stride enough to keep Izuku from having to jog—one of Yagi’s casual steps was nearly five of Izuku’s decently-sized strides.

“Then it’s nice to meet you, Yagi-san!” Green eyes hidden behind his goggles locked on Yagi’s face, trying to see if he could determine what was going on in the man’s head. The man lifted a brow questioningly when he caught Izuku staring. “Yagi-san, have you ever been a Pro Hero? You walk like one.”

Yagi gave a startled cough that set off alarm bells deep within Izuku’s mind because coughs shouldn’t sound that wet. The thought flickered away when Yagi regained his composure to say, “I was, but it’s been a while since I was active.” His free hand twitched up towards his left side, the motion being aborted halfway through completion. “I took a hit that I couldn’t completely shake and stepped out of the hero scene.”

Seeing his chance, Izuku took it with those very same alarm bells tolling all the more loudly within his mind. As innocently as he could, he asked, “Is that why your cough sounded wet?”

“Wh-What—?” Yagi descended into another startled cough that was swiftly followed by more. His free hand lifted to cover his mouth swiftly, Izuku’s body going rigid in alarm at the sight of blood splattered in tiny spots on his hand. Izuku’s grip on his other hand tightened while the man hunched over slightly. “Sh—c-crap…”

Suddenly, Izuku began to pull Yagi along again, this time tugging him away from the crowds and towards the restroom sign that was nearby. For a moment, the blonde resisted, but Izuku planted his feet stubbornly against the concrete below him, calling on the strength of the earth that resided within it. The man yielded. People parted some for them, a few offering worried glances until they disappeared behind the small dividing, curtain wall that cut off the restrooms from the event area. They entered the small sitting area before Izuku made a beeline for the open family restroom, shutting and locking the door behind them. He was already turning on the tap and bending water from it before his brain caught up to what he was doing.

 _Oops…_ Izuku thought, but didn’t stop pulling water from the tap until he felt that he had enough. With the condensed water clinging to his left hand, he turned the water off. He turned towards Yagi, who had slumped against the wall to the floor in his ongoing coughing fit, blood slowly covering his hand in a coating of red. _Well, here goes…_

Izuku settled next to the man, taking the hint that it was his left side that had taken the damage by the way that his free hand had instantly gone to clutch at the baggy shirt over said area. With a deep breath, Izuku let the water coat both of his hands before reaching out to place them on either side of Yagi’s. The man startled at the water, eyes snapping to Izuku as the boy’s eyebrows furrowed in concentration.

 _Take my chi—feel it, control it, mould it—and push it into the water._ Izuku thought the steps through, watching the water flare with the light of his chi entering it within milliseconds of thinking it. Whatever it was that Yagi had been starting to say faltered in surprise. _Now reach out for the patient’s energy, feel for the imbalances, knots, tangles, and broken paths._

Finding Yagi’s chi took longer as he was unfamiliar with healing someone else, but he didn’t think that three seconds was bad. Almost instantly, Izuku was aware of a startling amount of damage done to flesh and chi paths, leaving a tangle of scarring that was almost painful to just sense. Izuku’s hidden eyes widened in horror, easily able to tell that the knots and blocks had been forced to heal quickly instead of being guided gently back into place. It was also easy to tell that the knots had been forcibly torn and stitched back together multiple times without giving the original wound the time to heal. Some of the chi blocks and knots were even severe enough that Izuku could _feel_ the imminent organ failure rising like a tsunami of darkness where healthy chi paths should have been.

There was so much damage and much of it was from some form of healing that seemed to force the body to repair itself too fast.

It hurt Izuku to feel it, let alone try and figure out what he was sensing.

_Then smooth out the knots, imbalances, and tangles; encourage the body to heal stronger than before with a gentle, guiding push and pull._

Izuku set his jaw, eyes narrowed in determination as he started to carefully analyze the chi paths along the edge of the damage. He worked his way towards the worst of it swiftly, taking in all of the information until he figured that he had enough to work with. Then he moved towards one of the main chi paths and set to work.

 _As a main chi path, if I can get it flowing smoothly again, then everything else should more easily follow as the body wants to get back to normal._ Izuku shut his eyes, letting the mental map of major chi paths appear in his head. He imagined Yagi’s damaged chi paths overlapping with that image so he could better understand how he needed to approach this. _So untangle that, and the rest should follow…_

Izuku knew that it would be slow going to get the main path back to where it could function, and he was fully prepared for it as he carefully began to push and pull at Yagi’s chi. He guided it gently back into place so he wouldn’t shock the man’s body into thinking that his own chi was an intruder. As he did so, Izuku discovered something that startled him.

Yagi’s chi was threaded with seven others that worked together with his own in complete harmony. It was like feeling a strange dance of pure energy that soared and burned and resonated with strength. Something about it reminded Izuku of something that was similar but also so very different.

When Yagi’s main chi path slipped back into place unobstructed, Izuku nearly grinned. The effort that it took for him to force back the grin was made that much harder when Yagi seemed to relax in surprise with a startled inhale, as if the pain that had probably become a constant companion had faded. Regardless, Izuku still had a long series of tangles to undo, imbalances to fix, and broken paths to stitch back together stronger than before.

Now that he had fixed the major point of damage, Izuku found himself having to work swiftly as Yagi’s body almost eagerly worked to set itself right as he had predicted. A small headache began to build behind his eyes at the sudden effort of trying to keep up. He hadn’t anticipated the seven other chi’s mixed with Yagi’s own to further enhance the repairing process in a way that both helped and didn’t.

 _Stop, stop, stop!_ Izuku mentally yelled, having to quickly stitch together broken paths or untangle others one after the other at a pace that he knew wasn’t healthy. At the very least, much of the knotted, too fast healing now made sense. But trying to keep up with it so more knots didn’t form…

_Okay, stitch. Untangle. Untangle. Stitch. No, that shouldn’t be healed yet! Gotta untangle that. Now stitch, stitch, stitch—UNTANGLE!_

Izuku felt as if he was being pulled in seven different directions in order to keep up with the different chis until, all of a sudden, there was no more damage to fix and Izuku just kind of paused. He hadn’t expected that sudden end to healing Yagi, but the seven chi’s had prompted him to work faster than he had anticipated. The only thing that worried him was the potential for chi scarring, and how Yagi’s body would react to such a thing.

“Young Izuku, are you alright?” Yagi’s voice made Izuku’s eyes snap open, and he realized that he had started worrying on his bottom lip at some point. The man was looking at him in concern, but the pain that Izuku hadn’t even realized had been there before was now nowhere to be found.

“Yes…” Izuku nodded, moving his hands away as the light faded from the water. He rather sloppily bent the water to the sink, the condensed aspect of it being released gradually so he could get it down the drain more easily. “Your chi is just an absolute nightmare.”

“I beg your pardon?” Yagi seemed thrown, and Izuku had to resist the urge to look away from the water that he was controlling—he really didn’t want to get the entire bathroom wet and retry getting it into the sink.

“Your chi is your life energy, and your’s is an absolute nightmare.” Izuku repeated once he had finished depositing the water into the sink, already getting a small wad of toilet tissue to help Yagi get rid of the blood on his chin. He passed the tissues to the man, suddenly feeling anxious for what he had done. He looked at his feet, shifting on them nervously. “Yours feels like there are others, or at least impressions of others, threaded into yours. It’s kinda confusing and I didn’t think that it was possible for that to happen, but apparently it can and it helps healing while also making it a major pain since each of the other chi’s split off to pull part of the healing effort. But it’s as if they’re working with different blueprints on the chi paths that aren’t the main ones, so it does damage while it also does good when healing. So I had to work through the damage done from forced healing and—oh my gosh, I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have done that because you’re not supposed to heal anyone without their permission! I didn’t think, and you were coughing up blood and—”

“Izuku, calm down.” Two giant hands enveloped Izuku’s tiny shoulders, and Yagi’s weary looking face seemed to appear in front of Izuku when he tilted the boy’s chin up with his thumbs—his hands were huge! “Just breathe, young man.” Izuku nodded and obediently did so, suddenly highly aware of the way that his inner fire had been rolling within himself dangerously. Another few breathes settled the wild surging of said fire into a familiar, thrumming pulse of heat. “There you go, that’s it. Deep breaths.”

“I… I really am sorry for not asking…” Izuku mumbled, gaze dropping again as he could feel tears threatening to spill from his eyes. He forced them back, not wanting to take off his goggles. Regardless, his throat tightened and he barely breathed, “I just… you needed help and I knew that I could help…” His mouth opened and closed a few more times, Yagi kneeling patiently as he tried to continue. “I… couldn’t just… I couldn’t just not do anything…”

Yagi didn’t reply for a long moment, and Izuku squeezed his eyes shut when a hand lifted from one of his shoulders. He wasn’t prepared for said hand to lay on Izuku’s head, cushioned by the green curls that had escaped the bun that he had pulled his hair into—wait, when had his hood come off? He was even less prepared for Yagi to softly ruffle them, almost fondly.

“It’s alright, Young Izuku, you’re not in trouble.” Izuku’s eyes flew open, hidden green meeting Yagi’s clear to see blue. “While I don’t commend you to use your quirk in such a way, especially if it involves using it on other people, in this case, no harm was done. You managed to use your quirk in a respectable way, much like a hero would. So,” Yagi offered him a smile, lowering his hand so he could extend his pinky to Izuku, “I promise that I won’t tell anyone and that, even if someone finds out, you won’t get in trouble.”

Izuku could only stare at the offered pinky for a long moment before he offered a smile of his own, hooking his much tinier pinky with Yagi’s. With a final hair ruffle followed by Yagi completely cleaning himself up of blood, they left the tiny restroom. Surprisingly, it had only taken about thirty minutes for Izuku to heal Yagi, the bulk of it having been spent on fixing that main chi path. Regardless, it meant that he had lost that length of time to find his mom, but after having helped Yagi out the lost time didn’t weigh all that heavily on him.

“You said something about my chi having impression of others,” Yagi said slowly, glancing at Izuku. Said boy was currently perched on the man’s hip after an offer to be carried—and after such a short and intense healing session, Izuku didn’t care about the fact that he was a little too old to be carried as eh was drained. Izuku nodded at the comment, peering up at Yagi’s face. “What did you mean by that?”

“Well, it’s like your chi is… is… being bolstered by the impressions of seven others?” Izuku hummed thoughtfully, looking down at the floor in thought as he partially grasped his chin. “It’s not exactly _influenced_ like it would probably be with possession, but instead they’re working with your chi and enhancing it? I think that’s—” the sensation of the chi radiated by the sun filtering into his veins and strengthening his firebending came to the forefront of his mind “—yeah, enhancing it. They’re enhancing your chi, which makes healing interesting because they make it faster, but at the cost of chi burning and scarring because they work just slightly differently and your body has to adjust to that difference.” Izuku looked back up at Yagi. “Uh, did that make any sense, Yagi-san?”

“Some.” Yagi said, his face hard to read. “You said seven others. Are you sure about that?”

“Um, yeah, because including your own chi there were eight working in harmony. If I hadn’t of been concentrating on a main chi path I doubt that I would have noticed; they’re that closely working together. Most of the time.” Izuku admitted a little sheepishly. He left out the fact that he also wasn’t a master healer, but it wasn’t as if Yagi would be able to understand what he was talking about. “I just know that there was a lot of damage that prevented portions of your organs from getting the levels of chi that they needed—which I’m pretty sure leads to organ failure eventually. The damaged paths were more of a nightmare than the other chi’s though.”

“Hmmm…” Yagi hummed deep in his throat, the sound making his chest vibrate in a way that made Izuku have to suppress a giggle. “So… What exactly is your quirk, Young Izuku.”

 _I don’t have a quirk, I have bending…_ Izuku thought, resisting the urge to look away. Despite the fact that he had bending, it still hurt slightly that he was quirkless. He forced back the pain with an eagerness to finally be able to tell someone living about his bending.

“It’s called waterbending, and it allows me to control water or anything with a substantial amount of water in it with my chi!” Izuku easily explained, deciding to omit that he could control earth, fire, and air as well. “Then, since I can push my chi into the water, I can use it as a, um, medium—I think that’s the right word—to connect with another’s chi so I can heal them. I can also make water turn to ice and ice to water. I haven’t tried out steam yet, but that sounds like it will be possible too.”

“That’s a rather versatile quirk that you’ve got.” Yagi said, and Izuku internally flinched even as he forced a nod. “Are you planning on becoming a hero?”

All negative thoughts fled his mind and Izuku beamed, “Yes! I want to be a hero that can smile and make people feel safe like All Might!” Izuku resisted the urge to throw a fist up in the air as he excitedly told Yagi his dream—the dream that everyone spat on because he was quirkless and supposedly had no power. “I want to be the best hero that I can be so I can help people and protect their smiles, Yagi-san.”

“Well, I think that you will be a wonderful hero, Izuku-kun.” Yagi offered the boy a smile, not knowing just how much those words meant to him. “I look forwards to seeing how you do in the future.”

Izuku didn’t hesitate in tightly hugging Yagi, the wide smile on his face revealing his emotions as he choked back tears. Just because he knew that he was the Avatar and was basically a walking force of nature didn’t mean that Izuku didn’t worry about his dream. As of right now, he was deemed a quirkless loser that spent far too much time by himself and had those weird hero analysis notebooks—five of which were dedicated to nothing but his Avatar abilities and forms with a book for each element and the fifth on spirits and energy manipulation, all five written in languages that had long since disappeared from the face of the Earth. No one but his past lives seemed to believe in him. Which, while it was comforting, the words of a person that no longer was on this plane physically didn’t have the same impact as that of someone that was alive.

So Izuku hugged the man tightly, aware that Yagi was confused over the reaction but not fully caring.

Someone else believed in him and there was no way that he would ever forget that.

 

<><><>

 

Toshinori glanced back at the security desk, not feeling comfortable with leaving Young Izuku with the guards without making sure that the boy was reunited with his mother. Especially considering the boy had managed to do what Recovery Girl herself had deemed to be impossible and made his chest not ache for the first time since he had been injured. At this point, it almost felt as if he hadn’t even been injured, he felt _that good_. He also wanted to gently press the boy for information on the quirk that he had because he had never heard of such a quirk before and was very curious about it—especially since it could apparently sense One For All.

But All Might had an event in an hour and he needed to get changed so he could make his appearance.

So he left the boy in the secure hands of the security agents that were running the event, knowing that many of them were underground heroes in disguise with the rest undercover police officers.

He was nearly out of site of the security desk when he cast a final glance back at it. Toshinori paused when he saw that there was now a green-haired woman holding Izuku tightly in a hug, the boy’s own arms wrapped around her equally tight. When they pulled back, the boy had a watery smile plastered onto an apologetic face half hidden by the Eraserhead goggles he was still wearing.

With a smile, Toshinori turned back around and continued on. Despite the fact that that little boy had the budding heart of a hero with a smile to match, he couldn’t linger. He had an appearance to make.

 

<><><>

 

“What?” Toshinori looked at Recovery Girl blankly, unable to properly process what she had said. In truth, he thought that he had somehow managed to hear her incorrectly. “I’m afraid that I misheard you, Recovery Girl.”

“You didn’t mishear me, Toshinori.” The woman shook her head, her face showing the surprise that Toshinori felt. “Somehow, you’ve been healed completely.”

Toshinori set a hand on the bed that he was perched on in shock, feeling as if the world was spinning with the revelation. Sure, he had been feeling remarkably well for the past few weeks for no discernable reason and that his appetite had increased a notable amount. Both of which had been part of the reason why he had called Recovery Girl as he knew that wasn’t normal, because his appetite had been gradually _decreasing_ since he got injured. But he never would have guessed that he had been completely healed—he had been told by numerous people that it was _impossible_.

And yet here he was being told that the impossible had become the reality despite the giant scar that still marred his side like a giant spider web of damaged tissue, a permanent reminder of what had happened.

“But… how?” Toshinori floundered for an answer, raking through his memories almost frantically with a careful scrutiny. “I haven’t done anything different and you’re the only healer—”

A blinding smile that belonged to a boy that barely reached his waist with green-black hair pulled back in a bun, curls escaping it slightly. A boy that could control water in a way that he wasn’t familiar with—as if it were actually a part of him instead of something separate—and made said water glow. A boy that had admitted to healing him while panicking as Toshinori relished in the distinct sensation of a lack of pain searing through his chest with nearly everybreath. A boy that had gone on about chi and how Toshinori had seven other chis bolstering his own. A boy dressed in an All Might Silver Age hoodie and Eraserhead goggles.

A boy that was the only other healer that he had ever encountered since the last time that he’d seen Recovery Girl.

_But what was his name?_

“I take it that you remembered something.” Recovery Girl said, curiosity edging her voice.

“Yes,” Toshinori nodded slowly, placing a hand against his side as he remembered the feeling of cool water touching his side and warmth flowing through his chest, “I do… It was a boy at the Hero Expo. I was wandering around like this and found him standing on the back of a bench all alone. He had lost his mother, and I offered to take him to the security desk. On the way there, he asked me some questions that surprised me and I had a coughing attack.

“He took me to a restroom and the next thing that I know he was controlling water and holding it to my side. I remember starting to say something, but stopped when I saw the water that he was controlling light up. Almost instantly, my side began to feel warm, as if someone had placed a heating pad there.” Toshinori laced his fingers together, resting his elbows on his knees as he leaned forwards in thought. “I’m not sure how long it took, but in the span of a few seconds the pain that has almost always been in my side since being injured was gone. Not too much longer after that, he finished, put the water into the sink, and proceeded to panic for healing me without permission.

“After that, I took him to the security desk, questioning him about his quirk.” Blue eyes closed as he recalled the way the boy had clung to him tightly, seemingly not caring about his gaunt appearance. “He admitted to being able to control water in more ways than just healing and talked about ‘chis’. He called mine a nightmare… I think that he could, somehow sense One For All… I can’t believe that I forgot about that…”

“This boy,” Recovery Girl said slowly, her voice solemn, “did he ever tell you his name or what his quirk was?”

“Izuku.” Toshinori breathed the boy’s name finally. “All that he gave me name-wise was Izuku. As for his quirk, I think he called it ‘waterbending’.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Izuku gets into a problematic situation or two, meets Toshinori, and throws Naomasa for a loop.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Admittedly, I was shocked and a little overwhelmed at the response to the first chapter. (Kudos, comments, bookmarks, hits—everything!) So thanks for all that!
> 
> So, here's the second chapter. Hope y'all like it.

Sometimes, Izuku really disliked his classmates. Such as earlier that day, for instance. His teacher had made a mention about high schools and the hero track, which had resulted in Bakugou blowing up in his face and everyone laughing at him for admitting to wanting to get into Yuuei. Despite the fact that Izuku felt his fire rise within him defensively at the explosions that slightly charred his desk, he took a deep breath, straightening his back.

Looking Bakugou dead in the eye without fear, Izuku had firmly declared over the laughter and jeers of his peers, “You can’t stop me from trying to get into Yuuei, Bakugou. Regardless of what you or anyone else thinks or believes, I  _ will _ be a hero.”

Which had apparently not been the best thing to say as, after classes were done for the day, Bakugou managed to snag Izuku’s hero notebook before he could tuck it into his backpack, scorch it with a controlled explosion, and then chuck it out the window. After another instance in which Izuku didn’t fully back down and met Bakugou’s eyes the entire time, Izuku basically brushed the other boy him off in the end. Not too much later, Izuku found himself outside and recovering his notebook. The meticulously filled out binding of paper was floating in one of the tiny koi ponds that surrounded the school, leaving him to scoop it from the water and away from the few koi that had been nibbling at it curiously.

He pointedly did his best to ignore the way the sight made a memory press to the forefront of his mind of a tiny oasis that was settled within a cold environment, greenery easily growing in what should have been an impossible warmth. Nestled within the oasis was a pool with two koi swimming around each other endlessly, each a simple, black and white negative mirror of the other. There was the briefest flash of a red moon and then a darkened sky, leaving the black koi without its partner. Something within Izuku trembled and he shoved the memories away completely.

Izuku glanced around to make sure that no one was nearby before he carefully pulled the water from the wet pages, returning the liquid to the koi bond swiftly. He was grateful that he had decided to use water-resistant ink to write with and that he couldn’t bend dried ink. While he would have to go back and touch up the ruined pencil sketches that he hadn’t completed, the countless hours of observations were still intact. Not to mention, the scorch marks only damaged the edges of the notebook and not the whole thing.

“It’s salvageable…” He mumbled to himself as he began to leave school grounds, flicking through the pages. Without looking up, he made his way easily through people, using his seismic sense to avoid a collision. Just because the images that he got were skewed through the rubber soles of his shoes didn’t mean that he hadn’t learned to adjust to the information that he received through it. It may have taken a lot of practice and running into things, but he’d figured it out. “Which is good because I really don’t know how I would be able to replicate such a loss of information…”

He continued to walk, making his way home and muttering about things that he needed to change, add, or update within this particular volume. It wasn’t until he reached a civilian tunnel that he stopped, eyes narrowed in confusion at what his seismic sense was telling him. Slightly baffled, he crouched, placing his palm to the ground to get a clearer reading and make sure that he wasn’t misreading anything. Below him, tucked just under a manhole cover, he felt as if he was sensing something that was a living liquid, heartbeat and all. It was odd.

As a result, Izuku clutched at his notebook tightly as he cautiously entered the tunnel. All of his senses were on high alert as he skirted around the manhole that covered the source of the living liquid. He was almost out of the tunnel when the living liquid surged up and Izuku whirled around out of curiosity and almost instantly regretted that course of action.

A person with an amorphous quirk that made their body look like a polluted mass of fluid loomed over him.

“Ah, a perfect disguise!”

Scratch that; this man was a villain.

Izuku mentally swore even as he dodged the villain’s first attack with the subtle use of airbending. Now more than ever, he was grateful for Rinzen’s insistence on him learning how to use airbending to dodge and whirl out of the way like a leaf in the wind. He regretfully dropped his notebook—he could get it later—and spun away from the villain’s attack once more, drawing him out of the tunnel so Izuku had more room to move to better evade.

The villain surged at him again, and Izuku flipped clear over him with a tiny blast of air at the last second. There was a moment where the villain was baffled before he snapped around to glare at Izuku with bulbous eyes. A whip of slime lashed at Izuku once more, and he whirled out of the way gracefully.

_ I can’t keep dodging. _ Izuku realized as the villain cackled something about how he would be the perfect body to steal. A grimace pulled at his lips at both the thought and the villain’s words.  _ I’m going to have to attack him, but how can I do it without making my bending too obvious? _ Something racing through the sewers beneath his feet startled him as he launched himself into a short jump to evade another attack, and he landed sloppily in his surprise because whatever it was was fast, big, and had footsteps that felt like drum beats buzzing up his legs.  _ Wha—shit! _

“Got you!” The villain howled, slime gripping tightly at Izuku’s ankles. The boy jerked his arms up, eyes wide as he instinctively pulled on his inner fire, only to find the sparks of fire flickering in his palms suddenly put out when slime surged onto his arms. In another instant, there was slime wrenching his jaw open and his eyes widened. “Your body will be mine!”

Izuku did the first thing that came to mind as the stomach-churning slime shoved into his mouth: he forced a ball of air to fill his throat before the slime even reached his back teeth to provide a barrier that kept it from entering his lungs and throat. A barrier that was swiftly losing power as the breath within his lungs began to die.

_ I shouldn’t have hesitated to use my bending! _ He mentally panicked, mind whirling through ways that he could get out of this.  _ I’m going to have to use my airbending to even have a chance to get out of this.  _ He shut his eyes tightly, mentally willing the small bubbles of air in the slime to bend to his will.  _ Well, here go— _

Out of his line of sight, Izuku heard something metal clang almost deafeningly against concrete.

“Fear not! For I am here!” Izuku’s protective bubble of air in his throat faltered in his surprise and he suddenly found slime hastily forcing its way down his throat. Unbidden, he gagged. “Texas Smash!”

In an almost familiar whirling concussion of air, Izuku found himself free and able to breathe, the slime torn from his body by the air. He coughed gratefully, throat already sore from the abuse as he worked to calm his inner fire because fear was apparently a catalyst that made it act up. Then, with a last second warning churn of his stomach, Izuku found himself emptying the contents of his stomach as his body seemed to finally register the rancid tastes that the sludge had bombarded him with. Let alone his body catching up to the gagging that he had been doing beforehand. The worst part was that the sharp tang of stomach acid on his tongue was better than that of the slime.

“Ugh… fifteen out of ten do  _ not _ recommend…” He gasped to himself as he shifted away from the puddle of sick that he had created, wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Are you alright there, Young Man?”

Izuku swore that his heart nearly  _ stopped _ , eyes flinging up so fast that he would have gotten whiplash if it was possible. Before him, his large form familiar despite the lack of his iconic costume—which was traded out for olive cargo pants and a plain, white t-shirt—was All Might. All Might, the number one hero in Japan.

Izuku’s mind seemed to glitch in surprise.

_ By the Great Spirits… _ Izuku’s jaw worked in astonishment as he worked desperately to get his mind to function properly once more. Finally, he managed to practically squeak out, “I-I, yes, sir. I’m a-alright, All Might-san. I managed to d-dodge him, well, for the most part.”

“That is good to hear.” All Might boomed cheerfully even as he set about gathering the sludge villain from where his body had been splattered everywhere. He put the villain in… a large soda bottle? “I am sorry that you even had to go through such an experience. I am not knowledgeable of the sewer system here, and regretfully found myself turned around slightly as I was chasing this villain.”

“I-It’s alright.” Izuku stuttered, standing there uncertainly and wondering if he should possibly help All Might in gathering up the villain. “You can’t be expected t-to know everything, you are human after all.”

“Indeed.” All Might said after a few moments as Izuku internally began to panic at what he had just said—why did he say that? For a split instant, Izuku swore that All Might glanced at him critically. “I am curious, my boy, what is your quirk?”

Almost instantly Izuku fidgeted on his feet, suddenly unable to look at All Might. Despite the fact that he had a power that his classmates could only dream of and a destiny that matched it, he was still quirkless. Which meant that he was greatly familiar with all of the social stigmas that were tied to the title. It was clear that All Might noticed the sudden shift by the way the hero’s movement slowed the smallest amount.

“I, um…” Izuku took a deep breath, focusing on the connection that he had with the earth. If he could move the earth itself and bend metal to his will, he could tell his idol this much. Lifting his chin, Izuku declared evenly, “I don’t have a quirk.”

At that, All Might actually paused for a fraction of a second, his bright blue eyes locking on Izuku in that short moment—they were a familiar blue, but he just couldn’t figure out why. He regarded Izuku for what felt like an eternity that lasted merely a few seconds. Slowly, the hero said, “I see. Then I commend your ability to keep a level head despite the fact that you were as outmatched as you were.”

_ I wasn’t that outmatched. _ Izuku shook the thought away and said with a slight shrug, “Villains are just very, very dangerous bullies and I’ve had enough experience with bullies to know that panicking doesn’t help.” Izuku hesitated for a heartbeat, slightly embarrassed for what he was about to say to the number one hero. “Plus, I want to be a hero, so I need to know how to keep a level head because I’m already at a disadvantage because I don’t have a quirk. I may not be able to be a chart-topper hero, but being an underground hero will still allow me to help people. I know it will be hard, the hardest thing that I will ever do since I have to compete with people who have combatant-type quirks, but…” Izuku felt a surge of shyness overtake him and had to resist the urge to look away, remembering Yagi-san and what he had told the man. “But protecting people’s smiles will make it worth all of the trouble.”

Again, the hero regarded Izuku, the boy meeting All Might’s gaze evenly even though every part of him wanted to look away as embarrassment burned through him. He had just laid his dream out to the number one hero of Japan and basically just dismissed the situation that he had been through—not that it wasn’t absolutely terrifying, but he hadn’t been as defenseless as All Might thought him to be. But, at this point, there was no taking his words back, so he did his best to not look away from All Might’s critical, blue gaze.

There was some small part of him that was telling him that this was a test and that he couldn’t afford to fail it; that he had too much to lose if he did.

Finally, All Might straightened to his full height, having finished gathering the slime villain into a second soda bottle. There was a thoughtful pull to his eyebrows as he said, “If that truly is your goal, then I suggest that you move forward with caution and take as many precautions as you can to further it. As you said, you will have a harder time proving yourself, so hard work and your resolve will be key for obtaining your goal.”

Izuku blinked up at All Might, feeling as if he could barely breathe. All Might barely even knew him and had already expressed more support than anyone that Izuku daily interacted with. Granted, it was a cautionary form of support, but it was still a form of belief.

“Got it!” Izuku beamed widely, already planning what he needed to work on the most when it came down to training.  _ Definitely work on base strength, using my bending forms without actually bending, maybe some chi blocking, and quirk analysis is a _ — “Ah, my analysis book!”

Momentarily forgetting that All Might was there—a feat in and of itself because the man  _ was _ seven feet tall—, Izuku rushed back to the tunnel in search of his damaged notebook. His heart sunk at the sight of the singed notebook as he carefully picked it up, the newly slimy cover sticking to his fingers. He tentatively reached out to see if he could form a connection to bend it later. It took only a heartbeat to discover that bending the film of slime was more difficult than he was currently able to do anything about—if it had been a full moon, he might have stood a chance, but it wasn’t. Which meant…

“Come on. Now I have to restart it.” He complained under his breath, holding the foul smelling and partially ruined notebook at arm’s length. “As if I didn’t have enough to do to recover it after it took a bath in the koi pond after being scorched.” Tentatively, he peeled back the cover, wrinkling his nose as the pages stuck together. But the writing was still legible and it hadn't ripped on him. Yet. “At least that’s not a few weeks worth of analysis down the drain…”

The heavy steps of All Might seemed to hit the concrete with a contradictory lightness as he curiously came over. If it hadn’t of been for his seismic sense, Izuku might have startled when he turned around to find the hero closer than before. As it was, Izuku merely blinked up at him. When he realized that the hero was peering at the notebook’s cover with a curious expression, Izuku gingerly turned it around to display the current page on Backdraft that it was open to, already aware that it was difficult to read his neat scrawl with the slime damage.

“It’s one of my analysis books—I started doing them when I was six. I analyze quirks and break them down to try and figure out how they work as well as how best to combat against them. And it’s not just restricted to heroes and villains,” Izuku explained easily and matter of factly, wishing that he could effortlessly turn the page to show snippets of other analyses. “I’ve got a few classmates, teachers, neighbors, and my mother in at least one of my notebooks. The ones that I have multiple pages of or are in more than one book are typically ones with people that are still developing their quirk or I’ve had to scratch out parts of previous analyses because I got something incorrect. I’m trying to get faster at it and have also dug up some videos on less known fights to analyze how they might go down. This is my sixteenth book on quirk analysis alone. I have another series on analyzing hand-to-hand styles which is five books total as of right now.”

“This is very detailed, and from what I can tell, correct.” All Might commented, and it looked for a moment as if he would take it from Izuku out of curiosity. Something unsettled seemed to flash across his face. “If you keep this up, I suggest that you develop some sort of code. It would be detrimental to those that you have recorded in that particular notebook if you lost it and fell into hands that would use it with ill will.”

“I’ve been thinking about that as well, especially if people start to take my analyzing seriously. Currently, most people think that it’s just… well, me fanboying over heroes and being envious of quirks since they know that I analyze hero quirks.” Izuku nodded, closing the notebook with care. He glanced at the bottles filled with the sludge villain that were now tucked into the pockets of All Might’s cargo pants. “Um… Shouldn’t you take that guy to the station before he wakes up?”

“Right you are, my boy!” All Might laughed his signature laugh, snapping from serious to the more lighthearted personality that he displayed for television. He shifted out of the tunnel, Izuku following with his damaged notebook. All Might crouched, stretching out his legs slightly in preparation. “If that is all, then I must be going.”

Izuku opened his mouth to say something else—

And then All Might was surging into the air in a gust of wind, almost as if had used a distorted form of airbending to launch himself up, leaving Izuku with the words he had been about to say fizzling on his tongue in a sour way.

“I didn’t even get to say ‘thank you’...” Izuku muttered, his eyes widening a second later in horrified alarm. “Oh my gosh,  _ I forgot to get an autograph! _ ”

 

<><><>

 

Izuku wondered just what he did for the universe to hate him so much. It was three days after the sludge villain had attacked him and All Might seemed to be a new fixture to Musutafu if the frequent sightings of him were any indication. (Izuku would unashamedly admit to having the Might-Watch app downloaded.) But, apparently, the fact that All Might was in town didn’t seem to deter this particular quintet of men that seemed to want to get on the villain scene by creating a hostage situation. And, of course, they did so while he was on the way home after buying more notebooks and stopping at a convenience store to pick something up for his mom.

Safe to say, he hadn’t woken up that morning expecting to be put at gunpoint.

Unfortunately for the quintet, that also told Izuku that none of them had long-range quirks—mid-range possibly, but not long-range.

Probably.

_ So there is a high chance that they all have mid-range to short-range quirks. _ Izuku thought, eyes tracking the man nearest to him carefully from where he was laying on the tiled floor. Already, the two men that had been assigned to watch over them had formed a pattern in walking down the line of people shoved in the stockroom that left their backs open for a short amount of time.

Green eyes locked onto the man with an obvious mutation-based quirk, already noting the gills on the side of his neck and the vaguely fish-like features of his face. But it was the surprisingly large quantity of water that Izuku could feel on his person that instantly gave away the man’s quirk. The sight of multiple, soft water flasks peeking from under his coat further confirmed Izuku’s analysis.

_ Hydrokinesis of some sort, possibly stronger in the water given his features. _

The next man was a little bit more difficult. He clearly had a mutation-based quirk as well, but it was less obvious on what it was oriented for—because those little black, pore-like spots covering his skin could be for  _ anything _ . It wasn’t until Izuku noticed the quills that poked out of the collar of the man’s leather vest that he realized what they could be for.

_ Partially retractable quills or spines of unknown durability and hardness. Whether they can be used as projectiles is also unknown. _

Izuku mentally pulled up an image of the man that had been sent to guard the loading door. With his obviously muscular stature, he clearly fought with a brawn mentality even if he did use strategies. However, there was no obvious giveaway as to what his quirk was beyond that, but Izuku could parse together an inference based upon how he walked, stood, and generally carried himself.

_ Possible enhancement quirk or a quirk that controls something—physical strength is likely a key component. _

The other two he couldn’t remember much about as he had barely gotten glances of them. The only notable thing about them had been that they were both lean, as if their quirks didn’t fully rely on physical prowess to use them.

_ Two unknown mid-range quirks. _ Izuku finished his observations, green eyes narrowing in thought. He flicked his gaze around at the other people around him, taking the most notice of the toddler that was being cradled to the chest of a man. The young boy was sniffling, silent tears streaming down his cheeks as he trembled, his startling yellow eyes looking around in fear. When those yellow eyes landed on Izuku, he smiled warmly in an effort to comfort the child, subtly giving him a thumbs up.

_ I can’t use my bending despite the fact that it would make this so much easier, there are too many people here to tell the story later. Not to mention cameras who knows where. _ Izuku thought as the two guarding them turned to face each other.  _ But that doesn’t mean that I can’t do anything. I haven’t started documenting it yet, but I’ve been taught some chi blocking and if I combined it with my airbending forms I can use it to take these guys down easily. From what I can tell, only Muscles seems to have some sort of combat training. Quill-guy first. _

Izuku shifted his arms slowly into a position that he could use to suddenly flip himself to his feet. He would only get one chance at this with only a few seconds to actually act. If he timed this wrong, it would be disastrous.

Something within him questioned what he was doing—he was just a kid, the Avatar, yes, but a kid nonetheless—but another, much larger part of him silenced it.

He couldn’t just do  _ nothing _ —his DNA wasn’t coded that way.

His  _ spirit _ wasn’t made that way.

The two men turned.

_ Now! _ Every instinct within him urged with an internal scream.

So he acted before he had a chance to properly think.

In a blur of silent movement, Izuku surged to his feet, effortlessly clearing the distance between him and the man with the quills. He wasted no time in delivering short, harsh jabs with his knuckles up both legs, across his back, and down both arms before the man even had a chance to realize that he was there. Before Quill-guy could even react, he was collapsing into unconsciousness with a gasp from his body freaking out from the sudden blocking of chi. In the same short span that he crumpled like a marionette with cut strings, Izuku moved towards Fish-guy.

He effortlessly dodged the telegraphed blast of water that went for his head, able to read the untrained and too sharp fighting style—a style that focused too much on brute force and not on the water itself. Resisting the urge to pull the control over the water from the man, send it back to him, and ice him with it, Izuku ducked into the man’s guard. His hand flashed across the man’s arms, making them go limp before he twirled around to the man’s back. In another blistering fast series of jabs, the man was also on the floor unconscious.

It took barely a minute.

Izuku forced his breathing to even, aware that adrenaline was already burning through his veins like fire. He offered a smile to the other hostages, a thumbs up accompanying it. “So… how about we take the back door? You guys stay here, I’ll go handle Muscles.”

With that, he was gone, feet moving silently as he ghosted his way through the shelves filled with boxes. When he reached where he could see the loading door without being seen, he grimaced slightly at the sight of the man leaning against the doors, idly twirling his gun in obvious boredom. There was no way for Izuku to get close to the man without being seen as the shelves were lined up so no matter what path one took, they had to cross a decent sized stretch of empty floor.

So he settled for the next best thing, he crept around to the tiny little gap that was near the wall and squeezed his way to the next to last row. At the very end, he paused for a deep inhale to steady himself. Using his seismic sense, he could tell that the man hadn’t moved at all, and was bored out of his mind—a cautious peek through the boxes revealed that he had his eyes closed. For once, the universe seemed to be on his side.

Another deep breath and Izuku  _ moved _ .

The man opened his eyes at the last moment, surprise filling them even as Izuku managed to run a series of jabs up the arm that was holding the gun. Then he was forced to evade as a flaming hand lashed towards his face. For a second, Izuku felt fear at the fact that this man might actually have a long-range quirk, but the flame stayed attached to his hand even after Izuku was just out of punching range. That didn't mean that the searing heat of the narrow miss wisping against Izuku's skin was welcome.

_ Skin-based flames. Hand-to-hand specialist with little speed. _

In another instant, Izuku ducked into Muscles’ guard and disabled his other arm, leaving both of them dangling uselessly for a few heartbeats. It was enough for the man to gain a terrified and furious expression, a snarl building within his chest. Izuku didn’t let whatever he was about to say fall from his lips, knuckles leaving what he knew would be a line of bruises as they raced up Muscles’ side. With a final carefully aimed hit to his chest, the man went limp.

_ Okay, three down, two more to go. _

Izuku hurried back to the rest of the hostages, taking in the way that they looked at him incredulously. He ignored it and nodded towards the loading door. “I already got the guy back there. We can get out that way.”

“Um… But you need a key to get through that door.” One of the workers said, and Izuku blinked at him. “And the key is in the office by the desk.”

“Okay… New plan… Stay here.” He mumbled, darting away before anyone could grab at his shirt. He was glad that the door between the store and the stockroom was open so the movement of it opening wouldn’t attract attention. Regardless, he spared a cautious glance out of it before he slipped through the door. It took only a few moments for him to locate where one of the men was by his stylized, crimson-tipped black hair peeking over the shelves—not to mention his lazy steps that buzzed through the tiles in a blurry way.

Izuku ducked his head more than necessary, for once glad of his short height. It was ridiculously easy to sneak up behind Crimson-Tip. Until he unexpectedly turned and Izuku found himself forced to surge forwards as the man’s hooded eyes widened. He managed to get one of the man’s arms out of commission before he was shoved by an invisible force that tipped him off balance.

Izuku saw the flashing streak of a knife being brought downwards in a deadly arc and nearly panicked. Then he was rolling to the side as fast as he was able to do so, sweeping Crimson-Tip’s feet from under him. In another blur of auto-piloted speed, Izuku knocked him unconscious as well.

_ Some sort of kinesis quirk; simple telekinesis or material kinesis, unknown.  _ Izuku swept aside the bangs that were beginning to stick to his forehead so he could keep his eyes clear. Maybe he should try to wrangle his curls into a wolf-tail since he was now officially working on waterbending? He shook that idle thought aside. Now wasn’t the time.  _ One more; quirk, unknown. _

Izuku carefully centered himself again so he wouldn’t accidentally bend any of the three elements that were easily available. He couldn’t afford that right now. Instead, he calmed his chi and used his seismic sense to locate the final villain. It took a moment to find him since he wasn’t in the building and when he did, Izuku realized that the man was outside and had, apparently taken a kid visibly hostage without Izuku having noticed.

_ That complicates things… _ Izuku thought, more than a little irritated. He didn’t know how to handle a situation like this—well, not technically. Mainly, the issue came with the fact that the man was holding the girl at gunpoint, the barrel of said weapon pressed against the child’s temple. Gritting his teeth momentarily, he focused instead on what he  _ could  _ do, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to get to the key for the back doors without the chance of being seen.  _ I should probably notify the police there that the guys back here are taken care of. _

Mentally making a note of the fact that he would have to pay for it later, Izuku skulked around the store until he got a permanent marker and a roll of paper towels. As quietly as he possibly could, he opened both of them to begin to write out in a large version of his neatest handwriting:

_ Four guys in here are down. The last one is that one. Back doors locked. What do we do? _

Izuku swallowed back the anxious fear that bubbled up in his chest as he cautiously made his way to the front window furthest from the villain. Through it, he could see a number of police cars already blocking off the area, with a man in a trench coat being the negotiator for the situation. There were a handful of obvious pros scattered within the police officers, trying to make themselves as invisible as possible as they clearly planned out a way to rescue the hostages.

Sparing a glance at the man, seeing the way that he was holding the gun to the girl’s temple, Izuku steeled his resolve, tore off the appropriate length of paper towels to keep his message legible, and held it up in the window, arms spread some to keep it flat against the glass. When no one seemed to notice, he felt like swearing. Instead, he waved his hand as vigorously as he dared, eyes flashing back and forth between the police officers and the villain.

It took a long moment before someone noticed him, and the man merely stared, mouth opening and closing for a moment as Izuku flattened the message against the glass once more. Through some stroke of luck, the man recomposed himself before the villain noticed. The officer nodded minutely in acknowledgment, and Izuku felt like beaming as he pulled his message from the window. He remained in a crouch that allowed him to still look out of it while keeping him mostly from sight as a subtle shift went through the officers and heroes until they procured paper. They displayed it out of the line of sight of the villain and Izuku had to squint to read the message:

_ Stay put. _

They switched pages.

_ Help is coming. _

Izuku nodded in an exaggerated way, lowering his head from the window. He strained his ears to hear what the villain was saying—

“You have an hour to get us the money or my buddies and I fill everyone with lead.”

—and swore that his heart nearly stopped.

_ No, no, no, no, no! _ He thought as he sensed the man backing up to re-enter the store. Izuku snagged the marker and roll of paper towels, rushing to hide behind an end-cap, heart racing. He set the items he held on the floor, body poised and tense.  _ Not good! Not good at all! _

Silently, he scrambled to the end of the aisle even as the villain entered the store. Heart thundering in his ribcage so strongly that he was sure that the villain could hear it, Izuku waited with bated breath until he could see him. As soon as he could, he took another deep breath even as the girl’s eyes landed on him, offered a smile, and broke the silence with an overly happy:

“Hi.”

The villain startled, the gun already moving away from the girl’s head and towards Izuku as neon orange eyes locked on him for the brief moment that he was still. In a flurry of movements that he prayed would be enough, Izuku shut down the man’s entire right side, the gun falling from suddenly limp fingers. In a smooth move, he was behind the man and delivering another series of bruising jabs. The man’s left side followed his right even as he fell unconscious. 

Not even hesitating, Izuku swept the girl into his arms and jumped over the cashier station—he had no idea if this guy had some sort of healing quirk, which may be able to undo his chi blocking. Tucking her against the station, he positioned himself so he would be the first one seen if the man got up and followed them. It was also a position that allowed Izuku to attack the man unhindered. After a long moment, he hesitantly poked his head up.

The man was still laying on the floor, out cold.

Izuku flopped back down to the floor with a shaky breath, feeling tears of relief already spilling down his cheeks as the realization of what he had done hit him. He leaned his head back against the station, feeling as if something was lodged in his throat. Through some miracle, his stupid actions had actually worked.

He glanced over at the girl, and saw that she was curled in on herself, also crying. Without thinking, he pulled her into a hug. She tensed at the contact before she promptly buried her face into his shoulder, bawling her eyes out.

“Hey, it’s alright. It’s over now. You’re safe. I’ve got you.” He mumbled, carding his fingers through her hair gently like his mom used to do when he was little and woke up after a nightmare. It probably wasn’t all that effective since he was silently shedding tears as well, but she didn’t try to pull away. “I’ve got you. They can’t get you anymore.  _ I’ve got you. _ ”

After a few minutes and her crying had died down some, Izuku got to his feet with the girl still clinging to him. With tear tracks staining their cheeks, he made his way towards the back. He popped his head around the doorframe  cautiously to see the rest of the now former hostages waiting there. At some point, someone had dug up some rope from somewhere and tied up the men that had been back here, Muscles having been drug from the loading doors. Instantly, all eyes turned to Izuku.

“Uh…” He said intelligently, suddenly aware how he must look with sweaty bangs sticking to his forehead slightly, tear tracks on his face, and a girl perched on his hip. “The last two are down now… We can get out of here now. Hand it over to the police.”

Izuku wasn’t sure how, but he ended up leading everyone out of the store. He registered that the man that he had pegged as a negotiator looked slightly startled along with all of the heroes and officers. It was clear that no one had expected this.

Hell, Izuku hadn’t expected it.

But it had happened.

And, even as Izuku could feel himself going slightly numb with shock, a small part of him surged with happiness.

He had just managed to do something that a hero would do without a quirk or relying on his bending.

He had just  _ helped _ people.

And it felt amazing.

 

<><><>

 

Tsukauchi Naomasa had seen many things over the years as he worked in the Police department as a detective and occasional hostage negotiator. From the minorly strange quirk that some villain had managed to turn into a weapon—the ability to throw small, rubber objects at high velocity had been a particularly nasty case that he had helped to solve—to learning secrets that he had no true right to know—such as All Might’s injury and subsequent miracle healing by a  _ kid _ . So he had thought that nothing could have surprised him.

But the green haired boy sitting before him, a blanket around his shoulders, and detailing out what had happened with a level of detail that would make some pros jealous after he had single-handedly taken down four—admittedly ametuer villains—with an efficiency that did not match his age had just managed to jump into his list of top twenty surprises.

“So, for the record, you used a quirk to take down the villains, Midoriya?” Naomasa clarified once the boy was done with what basically came down to a report—a long-winded, detailed to the very number of hits report. Green eyes blinked up at him uncomprehendingly. “It is necessary to know for legal issues so you don’t get pinned down as a Vigilante for your actions for not telling us despite the fact that it was in self-defense.”

“I understand that, sir, I’ve read up on hero law quite a bit in my free time; I want to be a hero, you see.” Midoriya said, seeming as if he was about to go off on a tangent about something for an instant before he caught himself. With a small shake of the head, he continued. “Sorry, that’s not exactly pertinent to me telling you what happened. Anyway, I don’t have a quirk, Tsukauchi-san. I’m quirkless.”

Naomasa instantly re-evaluated the entire situation in regards of surprises; this one had just been moved into his top ten.

Naomasa hid his surprise behind a slow blink and questionably raised eyebrows. “Then, if you didn’t use a quirk based upon contact, how did you manage to knock the villains unconscious?”

“I used a style of martial arts that targets chi-points to immobilize one’s opponents; it’s called chi-blocking.” Midoriya explained easily as if it were common knowledge and not something that Naomasa had never heard of before. As if able to read the slight confusion that Naomasa had, the boy offered a small smile. “It’s alright if you don’t know it, it’s something that isn’t well known. Mainly, think of it as you sharply hit pressure points that make the body relax, but for a few hours instead of a few minutes or seconds. Technically, you’re temporarily stopping the flow of someone’s chi—their life energy—through that point.

“Since the villains don’t train their chi and this is the first time they’ve ever had it blocked, their bodies kinda panicked and knocked them unconscious to start healing by reopening the closed pathways. They should be awake… Uh… Within twelve hours? I’m actually not sure…” A flicker of panic flitted through emerald eyes even as Naomasa could practically see gears turning past green-black curls. “If they don’t wake within twenty-four hours you might want to get them to someone who can heal them. Even a minor healing quirk could help to boost their body’s own recovery rate enough to get them awake.”

Naomasa mentally noted that fact, another question coming to mind. This type of fighting was unknown to him and sounded very dangerous in the wrong hands. “Where did you learn this ‘chi-blocking’?”

“From an old friend,” Midoriya said easily, and Naomasa took the fact that his quirk didn't buzz at the back of his skull as a good sign. “They taught it to me so I could have a way of defending myself with just my hands since I don’t have a quirk. Unfortunately, they’re, well…” Midoriya cleared his throat awkwardly, shifting his eyes away briefly and Naomasa understood. “And, as far as I know, they were the only one who knew it before they taught me.”

Naomasa found himself almost instantly relieved at that. “One more question and then you can go.” Midoriya nodded, relief showing on his face—so this questioning had actually been getting to him a little. “What made you do it?”

Another blink and then Midoriya ducked his head in embarrassment. It lasted only for a moment as, with a deep breath, he lifted his chin and met Naomasa’s gaze dead on, revealing the fire of a burning spirit flaring in emerald eyes like real flames. “I want to be a hero, Tsukauchi-san. I want to be a hero that protects people’s smiles. Since the beginning of the situation, I had been reflexively and subconsciously analyzing the villains and their quirks—I analyze quirks in my free time, you see. Then, suddenly, before I could properly think about it, I  _ moved _ .

“I don’t know why.” Midoriya admitted openly. “It could have been that it was the fear that I felt that influenced me. It could have been the fear on the faces of the other hostage’s that influenced me. It could have been that some part of me wanted to get rid of that fear. It could have been that the frustration of dealing with bullies for so many years was projected onto the villains when they targeted others that influenced me. I don’t know.

“The only thing that I can be positive about is that I wanted to help. I wanted to help them not feel helpless.” The boy’s voice had a level of conviction and a painful amount of  _ knowing _ in it as if he knew what it was like to be helpless—and considering how much of society treated quirkless, Naomasa didn’t doubt it. “So my body moved, making my choice for me, before I had a chance to think about it.”

And, regardless of his quirk, Naomasa  _ believed him. _

“Ah,” Midoriya practically squeaked, suddenly ducking his head again with a blush burning a bright pink across his face, “sorry. That was a bit of an unintentional spiel. Sorry...”

“That’s alright, Midoriya.” Naomasa smiled reassuringly. “With that sort of determination, I don’t doubt that you will become a wonderful hero once you’ve been given some direction and taught safety procedures.” Midoriya’s head snapped up so sharply it was a wonder he didn't get whiplash. There was a blank sort of surprise plastered on his face that actually made Naomasa’s heart ache a little at the clear sign that no one believed in the boy. He tipped his hat to Midoriya almost playfully. “Well, that ends the questioning, Midoriya. I hope that you don’t make this a habit of yours until you actually get a license. And, when that happens, well, I look forwards to working with you.”

It took Midoriya a moment before he responded, flashing a thousand watt smile at Naomasa with a shaky, slightly disbelieving laugh. “Yes, sir!”

And, as he walked away thinking about how to keep the full details of this particular incident off the news and how the police would have to confiscate the security footage of the entire thing to protect Midoriya’s identity from being leaked, his mind was also reeling. For the first time since he had ever heard of the rising hero All Might that did everything with a smile, Naomasa finally thought that he had met someone that could match the number one hero with a smile.

Because, despite how watery the smile had been, it had been just as brilliant at the blonde hero’s.

And this incident was promptly moved up to fall into his top  _ five _ . 

 

<><><>

 

Izuku was surprised that his mother even let him out of the house after that incident, and was glad that she didn’t hover over him all that much past the usual. All that he had to do was write up a schedule dictating his approximate location at what time for the next month and message her if something came up. All in all, it was relatively minor—mainly because the police had managed to keep it out of the news so far.

Even if it was a little difficult to explain why he was going to the forest and Dagobah beach so often.

(But it wasn’t like he could tell her about his bending so late without making it seem as if he didn’t trust her—which he did, and it hurt that he hadn’t told her yet, almost as if claws were hooking into his chest. He just didn't know how to tell her that it was for her safety. He had no clue where to start in telling her the story of the Avatar when he only knew bits and pieces himself.)

Regardless, he spent more time at Dagobah beach than anything since he needed to build up his base physical strength. While he had known that the beach was commonly used as a dumping ground for things that people didn’t want, he hadn’t realized just how bad it had been until he went past it a year and a half prior. It had made something within his very spirit cry out in an outraged sort of grief that had prompted him to spend four months doing research so he could go through the official channels to get a series of dumpsters set up in the parking lot. Some of them were for recycling while others were for non-recyclables. It had taken about eight months for that to get through under his statement of a community service project—and, through some miracle, he’d managed to get it put through even though no one seemed to believe that he could do it.

As it stood now, he was determined to get the half of the beach that still remained cluttered cleared within four months, putting most of his energy into it now that he was nearing the end of his combat oriented waterbending training.

So a week after he had proved to be a not-so-defenseless defenseless hostage, Izuku was hard at work in clearing the beach when he found that, suddenly, he was being watched. He let out a small grunt as he pulled out a strange tangle of two bikes and some sort of storage rack followed by a tire. He slung the tire over one shoulder, holding onto the tangle of metal as he propped it precariously onto his other shoulder. For a moment, he let his body adjust to the new shift in balance before he began to jog steadily towards the stairs that led to the parking lot, sparing a glance at the stranger that was watching him.

The man had a wild splay of blonde hair that flared from his head, two long bangs hanging down to frame his face. He had an athletic build that was lightly accented by the way that his shirt fit him, settling on his torso in a way that was less showy in displaying the muscles that he had but still managed to acknowledge them. The dissonance with that alone was enough to peak Izuku’s interest, but combined with the way bright blue eyes analyzed him only made questions rear up in his head.

Those eyes were familiar. Why were they familiar? Who was this man?

“Afternoon, sir.” Izuku grinned at the man as he passed, heading towards the dumpster for tires. On the way, he gently set the twisted tangle of metal down—he had to take off the non-metal pieces. At the tire dumpster, he moved with a practiced spin, dropped the tire to his hands with a shrug, and promptly tossed it up and into the bin. As expected it thudded into the bin with a solid  _ thunk! _ Izuku went back to the mangled metal and pegan to strip it of non-metal things with an ease that he had settled into after about the tenth bike. The rust didn’t even stop him.

“My boy,” Izuku didn’t look up when the man spoke even as recognition pinged in his mind somewhere, “what are you doing?”

“Cleaning the beach.” Izuku said, still looking down at what he was doing. Despite the fact that it was two bikes and a rack of some sort, many of the non-metal pieces had seemingly vanished already and he was almost done. “What else?”

“I’m sorry, that came out incorrectly.” The man paused for a moment, and Izuku peered through his sweaty bangs in a short glance. “What I meant was why? Why are you cleaning the beach? I many be new in town, but I’ve heard that this beach is a lost cause. So why are you doing this?”

“Why am I doing this?” Izuku repeated, hands pausing momentarily. Idly, he mentally catalogued that new piece of information of this man being new in town. “Because why  _ not _ ?” He partially wrenched the last bike handle off, the sun-rotted rubber coming easily. He tossed the metal into the correct bin, hearing the harsh, clattering clang of metal on metal even as he stooped for what he had stripped from the bikes. He put the stripped materials and pieces in the trash dumpster. “No one else is going to do it, it’s a job that needs to be done, and hero’s don’t just save people. So, if I want to be a hero in the future, I gotta learn how to get to the nitty-gritty basics of heroism—like people had to do before quirks.” Izuku offered an apologetic quirk of his lips. “Now, I’m sorry if this comes off as rude, but I have thirty minutes before I have to start heading home for the day and I’d like to get more done before then.”

With that, Izuku didn’t wait for a response before he jogged back down to the beach to wrestle more trash from the slowly dwindling heaps.

Afterall, he had a self-imposed job to do.

Plus, three people believed that he could be a hero, and he couldn’t let them down.

He never saw the astonished and thoughtful expression on the stranger’s face.

 

<><><>

 

“You’ve been busy, Toshinori.” Naomasa glared at him playfully, earning an impish grin in response. “And considering that I do all of your paperwork on top of my normal cases…”

“Oh, you know that you’re the absolute  _ best _ and that I no one else could handle my ‘annoying habits’ as well as you.” Toshinori said warmly, lifting his mug of tea to his lips for a sip. Currently, they were sitting around Toshinori’s kitchen table to catch up with each other properly now that he was in Musutafu. Toshinori had relaxed One For All so he was less All Might in appearance and instead looked like  _ Toshinori _ —which was probably the only good thing that had come out of that injury as he could now walk around incognito in public despite it having been healed. With the warm steam rising from his mug hitting his face, he said, “And it’s not like you haven’t figured out a system that works efficiently.”

“If you mean efficiently as a synonym for an absolute trainwreck, then yes, you are correct.” Naomasa chuckled, his own hands curled around his own much smaller mug of tea as Toshinori snickered slightly. “Oh, stop it. You know it’s true, and this week has been exceptionally trying what with that hostage case that ended up  _ resolving itself _ .”

“Oh?” Toshinori perked up in interest. It wasn’t often that such things happened, and they almost always ended up in the hero gossip chains somehow—chains that he typically weren’t involved in because of the distance that typically he kept from others. He settled his mug in his large hands, resting them on the table. “That’s out of the ordinary, for sure, but I don’t see why it would affect your workload significantly.”

Naomasa laughed almost mockingly before settling a serious look at Toshinori. “Toshi, it was a  _ kid _ . A fourteen-year-old kid took out five villains so fast that none of them even had a chance to properly defend themselves—one of which was holding another hostage at gunpoint. Then, said kid gave me such a detailed report that I could tell you just how many hits that he dealt. I can also give you the kid's terrifyingly accurate, if short, description of the quirks of four of the villains despite having next to no information on any of them.”

Toshinori blinked, finding himself impressed about this mysterious kid’s skills—even if the quirk analysis thing poked at a memory involving a quirkless boy and a sludge villain a week and a half ago. Intrigued, the blonde leaned forward slightly onto the table. “Really? That’s actually very impressive for one so young. Is he planning to be a hero?”

“Hold up on the questions there, I’m not done yet.” Naomasa grinned widely in a way that Toshinori knew meant that this kid was  _ something else _ and had managed to surprise the detective.

“There’s more?” Toshinori’s eyebrows rose in surprise, growing even more invested in finding out what else there was to this story. “What more can this boy do? Does he have some rare quirk?”

“That’s it, Toshinori. This boy  _ doesn’t have a quirk _ , he’s  _ quirkless _ . I even dug up his record for the sake of the sanity of everyone on the case, and the boy doesn’t have an active Alpha Plus gene.” Naomasa stressed in a way that told Toshinori that he still hardly believed it. “This boy, that doesn’t even have a quirk can move like the wind itself is at his heels and knocked out five villains with a fighting style that I’ve never heard of. There was no damage to him or his surroundings, and the villains only got a series of welts that turned into bruises from jabs that almost effortlessly took them down and made their arms go limp if he wasn’t fast enough to get it done all at one time. There are Pros that can’t do their job that well.

“ _ And _ ,” Naomasa added, “as if that wasn’t enough, this boy said that all of that was, essentially, him  _ running on instinct _ . He kept his head to such an extent that he gave me forty-five minutes worth of a report as easily as breathing; kept a calm head during a situation that most would have freaked out about; was able to break apart his opponents’ quirks with minimal information; incapacitated said five opponents with a level of fighting prowess to make some experienced fighters jealous as he deliberately targeted specific places no more than a few square centimeters in size; got a message to the police officer’s outside without notifying the last villain; took down the last villain while he had a hostage in his arms; and got said hostage to relative safety in only five seconds due to not knowing if the last villain had a healing quirk that could counteract the effects of his fighting style.”

“That’s…” Toshinori struggled for words, no longer trying to muffle the astonishment that he felt. This particular situation deserved it. “That’s rather remarkable. Are you sure the boy doesn’t have any sort of hero background?”

“Most definitely, we’ve gone through  _ everything _ . Divorced parents as of ten years ago with no foul play behind it—just a simple realization that they weren’t right for each other. His mother is a stay-at-home mom and his father is a businessman that works overseas to further support his ex-wife and son with no history of heroes or villains on either side.” Naomasa offered just enough information that Toshinori’s answer was given without fully compromising their privacy. “Also, I can’t forget that he can give your real smiles a run for their money and, despite the steel that he shows, he’s also this shy little kid that makes that smile all that much better when he brings it out. And, he has the honor of having made my list of top five surprises. He’s just behind the one where that strange kid healed you—which we’ve still found no leads for, by the way.”

“That entire case just blows the norms out of the water.” Toshinori leaned back in his chair thoughtfully. The more that he heard about the kid…  _ Maybe… _ “What did he look like?”

“Really, despite his coloration, he was almost distressingly plain.” The detective said, looking down at his mug. “He had a shockingly toned frame for his age under his T-shirt, and, when combined with his short stature for his age, it’s a little more pronounced than expected. His face is rounded and he has an ungodly amount of freckles under his green eyes. His hair is probably the most distinctive part of him, and is the most unruly mop of green-black curls that I have ever seen.”

“That sounds like the kid that I ran into when I was dealing with that sludge villain and then again on Dagobah. Come to think of it, I’ve glimpsed him on some of my morning runs lately too…” Toshinori observed with a pensive expression. At Naomasa’s raised eyebrow, he explained, “The boy also had a thing for quirk analysis and one of his books was ruined during the small skirmish. As for Dagobah, he’s working to clean it up.”

“Ah, that’s right, I forgot about hearing about the boy that went through a series of legal channels to get dumpsters for a community service project that everyone said was impossible. It was very briefly in his file, but it was just a few short sentences without any details. I didn’t realize that he put it in for Dagobah.” With an understanding hum, Naomasa lifted his mug. “Now that impossible part makes more sense. So he’s actually doing it?”

“Yes, from what I can tell, about half of the beach has been cleared.” Blue eyes drifted down to his own mug of tea. Even though he was fairly certain about the answer, he asked, “Is he actually doing it all by himself after going through all of the legal hoops to get it all certified?”

“From what I understood, yes, and if he’s gotten that much of it cleared in sixth months, he might actually be able to get the whole thing cleared of trash.” A slightly baffled sort of amused astonishment came upon Naomasa’s face as he shook his head. “That kid… Honestly, I hope that that kid’s Alpha Plus gene never activates.”

Genuinely curious, Toshinori queried, “Why?”

“Because he’s already basically a mini force of nature as he is right now  _ without _ a quirk. Imagine what he could do with a stereotypical weak quirk, let alone what all that he could do with one that would be considered  _ strong _ .” Naomasa gave Toshinori a teasing look. “We already have one force of nature running about with bunny ears; the world wouldn’t be able to handle  _ two _ .”

“I take offense to that.” Despite his words, the blonde grinned at his friend. Then that pensive look returned to his face, and a startled sort of horror settled in Naomasa’s eyes.

“Oh my god. Toshinori,  _ no _ .”

“I don’t see the harm in at least  _ considering _ him, Naomasa. If he has had such an impression on you, then it would basically be a crime to not look into him. I’ve told Nighteye that I would  _ consider _ Young Togata, not that I would definitely pick him. After all, my choice of who is my Successor resides with me in the end.” Toshinori bared his thought process even as Naomasa looked as if the world was about to end. “Is there any way that I can get the recording of the questioning or any on the fight?”

“I absolutely hate you sometimes, you know. Especially when you’re right.”

“So that’s a yes?”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bonding time, clean beach, and an offer. What can possibly go wrong?

Izuku was surprised that he saw the blonde man again on his early morning jog four days later, and, judging by the man’s response, he was slightly startled as well.

“A bit early for someone your age to be out jogging.” The blonde man said rather casually, his breathing even—either he had just started or was fit enough that the pace of his jog didn’t really bother him.

“This neighborhood is safe even before the sun rises, sir.” Izuku said easily with a shrug despite the fact that he had been jogging for a while now. The breathing exercises that he had to do for airbending and firebending were more than enough to let him know how to manage his breath to run. “And it’s a good way to wake up—fresh air and all.”

“That it is.” The man agreed.

They jogged silently next to each other before the man took a turn after a few blocks while Izuku continued to go straight. He offered a casual wave with much of his body still turned to Izuku before he was out of sight. The fact that he didn’t lose his footing even as he turned was rather noteworthy in Izuku’s opinion.

By no means was it a long meeting that morning, and Izuku had mostly forgotten about it by the afternoon. But it didn’t take long before Izuku found himself repeatedly running into the man on his morning jog where they jogged together for a few blocks and then the man took his typical turn. If it hadn’t of been for the way that none of Izuku’s danger senses seemed to go off around the man, he would have thought it to be more than a little worrying. There were people with ill will out there, but this man, with his too-earnest blue eyes and comforting aura wasn’t one of them.

As a result, Izuku found himself tentatively striking up casual conversations with him for those short few blocks—it wasn’t often that he met someone willing to go jogging before the sun had even risen. Mostly, it was about small things that were common knowledge, such as hero news, an interning student at a local office that was beginning to gain popularity, or a new ice cream parlor that opened up downtown that served a rotation of hero-themed sundays. In truth, it was nice since the man would often tell him about similar things about Tokyo—which was apparently where he lived before moving—, throwing in a few tidbits about how some of the themed cafes in Musutafu were interesting.

Izuku openly admitted to liking a particular cat cafe that had a large variety of hero merch hung up on the walls down by Jakuu station that was tucked just out of the way that most people didn’t know it was there. Apparently, that little tidbit of information was enough to actually break the awkwardness of it all and something about the acquaintanceship shifted. By no means was it a tangible thing but that didn’t mean that Izuku didn’t notice it when it happened.

Their topics for their conversations shifted slightly into more personal things that included hobbies and things that they enjoyed. Izuku admitted to the fact that he absolutely loved heroes and had a hobby of analyzing mostly hero quirks. The man almost sheepishly informed him that he enjoyed gardening, but had to limit himself to what plants that could withstand an accidental few days of neglect and that he was dreadful with difficult plants. At some point, Izuku even started to see the man checking up on him at the beach.

But, most notably, Izuku found himself actually enjoying the man’s company without feeling uncomfortable in any way.

So Izuku decided that he might as well properly introduce himself as, even after two months of talking to the man, he didn’t know the blonde’s name.

His mother would probably reprimand him lightly about manners after she reprimanded him on the danger of strangers when she found out.

“Ah,” Izuku said once morning as they met up, blue eyes looking at him with a patient sort of curiosity that settled his nerves, “well, I was thinking yesterday that I still don’t know your name, sir. Mine’s Midoriya Izuku.”

“Yagi Toshinori.” The newly identified Yagi-san said, a smile pulling at his lips in a way that said that he was oblivious to Izuku’s astonishment— _was that why this man seemed so familiar?_ “It’s a pleasure to officially get to know you, Young Midoriya.”

“The pleasure’s mine,” Izuku said, mouth running ahead of him with pleasantries. Almost instantly, he felt his ears burn with embarrassment and he focused his gaze in from of him. “Uh, I mean… It’s just…” He wracked his brain and found himself going with the first thing that came to mind. “Most people don’t treat me normally.”

 _Oh, by the Great Spirits, why did I say that?!_ Izuku internally squeaked, panic clenching in his chest.

“I can’t see why, you seem like a fine young man to me, Young Midoriya.” Yagi-san’s voice was steady and reassuring in a truthfully earnest way. “I see no reason for anyone to treat you in an odd way.”

 _Tell him._ Some voice at the back of Izuku’s mind whispered, urging him to admit the one thing that always seemed to turn people away. Truthfully, he knew that it was a way to accurately judge someone’s character, but it hurt to think about all of those times that someone had left him because he was quirkless. _Tell him that you’re quirkless._

“They… They treat me like that because…” Izuku still refused to look at Yagi-san, his gaze locked down at his feet and the concrete zipping by beneath his shoes. “Well, because I’m quirkless.”

“There’s nothing to be ashamed of in being quirkless, my boy. It doesn’t change who you really are.” Yagi-san said kindly, a note of something in his voice that Izuku couldn’t quite place. There was a short pause before he tacked on, “For the record, I’m quirkless as well.”

Izuku startled, his eyes widening and flying up to Yagi-san’s face in surprise. There was an open honesty there that made Izuku’s mind falter in surprise because _he had never met another quirkless person before!_

The next thing he knew he was yelping as he realized far too late that his legs had seemed to forget that he was supposed to be jogging. As a result, he found himself falling, only to tuck reflexively into a roll. His shoulder briefly hit the concrete and then he was pulling his feet in to hastily work for his footing and balance the instant that they were hitting the ground again. He used one hand to steady himself in a slightly frantic moment and scrambled back up into what felt like a flailing recovery as he tried to adjust to the shifts in momentum and the fact that he was back up on his feet again.

It all happened in only a few heartbeats and had been entirely his fault, but it was enough to have Izuku mentally bristling into a defensive mode. He’d had way too many incidents with bullies thinking that it was funny to mess with the quirkless kid that it was now an ingrained reaction if something like that happened when he was calm. While he could avoid it for the most part, there had been this kid with a tripping quirk that had been particularly fond of targeting Izuku as a distraction for others to surround him. Typically, there wasn’t an actual beating as Izuku mostly was able to rapidly get his feet back under him and book it. In those few times that he hadn’t been able to sort out his balance and disorientation, he had resorted to self-defense. Only the fact that the kids that ganged up on him didn’t want to admit that they’d been defeated by quirkless little Deku was the reason that he didn’t have any marks on his record for fighting.

“Young Midoriya, are you alright?” Yagi-san asked, clear concern in his voice and written on his face. The blonde was still next to him, something about his body positioning telling Izuku that he had been preparing to help him in some form.

“Yeah,” Izuku nodded, forcibly relaxing himself, “there was a kid in my class a few years back with a tripping quirk. I happened to be his favorite target.”

It was a simple and easy explanation that Izuku didn't further expand on. Yagi-san didn't press. After all, the hidden words behind it was a given as to what that simple phrase meant to anyone without a quirk or with a quirk deemed as weak.

They separated not too long after, continuing on their morning runs without another word.

But Izuku got a new sense that he understood the man better.

 

<><><>

 

A week later when Izuku showed up late to Dagobah sporting bandages around his forearms that hadn’t been there that morning, Yagi-san immediately refused to let him set foot on the sand. The man had taken one glance at the bandages, concern flying across his face, and promptly declared that Izuku could skip one day of cleaning. When Izuku just as resolutely refused, the next thing that the boy knew he was flung across one of the man’s shoulders as if he weighed nothing and carried away at a sedated jog.

It took a few moments for Izuku to realize what just happened, and when he did he was torn between embarrassment and amusement. The fact that Yagi-san had moved hadn’t even registered to him, partially due to the fact that he hadn’t realized that the man could, in fact, move that fast. The rest had to do with the fact that Izuku was slightly distracted by the slightly burning pain that the cuts under the bandages pulsed with despite the fact that there was cream on them. So the fact that the man had been able to snatch him up so quickly and fling him onto a shoulder without Izuku aware of the intent in order to respond was slightly embarrassing. What was amusing was that Yagi had done so without a second thought and seemed to have no qualms about his actions as he toted Izuku away from the beach. They garnered more than a few startled and questioning looks as they moved through the city to which Izuku waved back casually.

By the time that Yagi-san set Izuku down, they were outside what Izuku recognized as an ice cream parlor that specialized in soft serve, frozen yogurt, and sherbet. Izuku blinked at the place before turning his emerald gaze to Yagi-san. The man now looked slightly sheepish, but there was a steel tucked away at the back of his eyes that spoke of his resolve. Interestingly enough, he didn’t even appear to be partially out of breath despite the fact that Izuku knew that he wasn’t exactly the lightest person to carry.

Idly, the information was tucked away at the back of Izuku’s head to possibly mull over later.

“Yagi-san, care to tell me what that was about?” Izuku tilted his head slightly. His green eyes flicked to the ice cream parlor. “And could you please explain why we’re here?”

“You didn’t need to go into that trash heap and start cleaning with open wounds—even if they are covered. And, as I figured that you wouldn’t give after you refused, I did the first thing that came to mind: get you out of there.” Fingers rubbed at the back of Yagi-san’s neck almost sheepishly, and he messed up the unruly mess of his hair even more. Yagi-san smiled kindly and earnestly in a way that clearly betrayed that he had absolutely no idea what he was doing exactly. “From there, I decided that a break would do you good and a little ice cream wouldn’t hurt you. So, here we are; my treat.”

Izuku couldn’t help it, he beamed with a small laugh, feeling his spirit soar just a little bit. He wasn’t used to anyone giving him the time of day past his mother, Nuska—whenever he saw the elusive spirit, that is—, and his past lives. Now, it seemed that Yagi-san had been added to the short list. No one wanted to hang around the quirkless boy that wanted to be a hero as if they were afraid that they would somehow contract some sort of disease. So finding someone that was willing to be around him so openly, only looking at _who_ he was and not what he _lacked_ … Well, it was a breath of fresh air.

“That’s a bit of a roundabout way of saying that I’m irresponsible, Yagi-san,” Izuku said rather playfully in response, “but it _is_ effective.”

Yagi-san merely smiled back, gently guiding him into the parlor with a giant hand pressing between Izuku’s shoulder blades. Izuku got a simple cup of chocolate frozen yogurt, Yagi-san somehow managing to convince the worker to throw on some of the All Might themed sprinkles without Izuku knowing—how Yagi-san managed it in the short time that Izuku looked down to text his mother that he wasn’t at Dagobah and would explain in detail later was slightly baffling. Yagi-san’s just as simple cup of vanilla soft serve was decorated in much the same matter even if the shadow of amusement flickering in his eyes made no sense.

They sat down and continued with their conversation from that morning about heroes and how a new hero in Tokyo was beginning to make a name for himself as an intern. From there, Izuku managed to start rambling on about how his quirk worked well with the hero that he was interning under. Yagi-san listened raptly with only the occasional short comment. Encouraged by the fact that he seemed to have an audience that was willing to listen to him prattle on about quirks, Izuku began to list all the pros and cons that were immediately obvious with the intern-hero pairing. It wasn’t until Izuku noted that there was a sort of fond amusement pulling at the man’s face that he realized that he’d been talking for a solid fifteen minutes straight at a rapid pace.

“Ah, sorry.” Izuku ducked his head, slightly embarrassed, poking his spoon at the small amount of liquid and sprinkles that remained at the bottom of his cup. “I’m, ah, a bit of a quirk enthusiast?”

“I figured as much from you telling me that you liked to analyze quirks, I just didn’t realize that you were this enthusiastic.” Yagi-san chuckled, with a slight shake of his head. “It’s actually rather impressive, Young Midoriya. You have quite the analytical head on your shoulders, I’m sure that it will be beneficial to you in the future.”

“Thanks.” Izuku shot the man a small smile, not many people seemed to understand his analytical side and skills, brushing them off before they could even give him a chance.

“The first time that we met, you said something about wanting to become a hero…” Yagi-san said slowly, carefully. Izuku felt his heart drop at the change in topic, fearing that he would just hear another warning telling him to give up his dream from the man before him—the only other quirkless person that he had ever met. “What I want to know, is why? Why do you want to become a hero?”

Izuku paused at that, completely thrown. Sure, he had been asked that question more times in the past few months than his entire life, but something about this time… Something about it felt different. Despite the fact that they were sitting rather casually in an ice cream parlor after having finished their frozen treats long ago, there seemed to be a weight to the question, as if Izuku’s answer would determine something highly important in the future.

So Izuku took a thoughtful moment to completely compose a response.

“On the most basic level, I want to be a hero to protect people’s smiles,” Izuku explained slowly, cutting out the part that also included that he felt compelled to help people and that it was essentially his destiny to do so. How could he explain the concept of the Avatar to a practical stranger when he hadn’t even broached the topic with his mother. “I want to help people, and I always have. So much to the point that it’s gotten me in trouble a few times for acting without thinking because I stood up to bullies. I want to… I want to try to make sure that people have a reason to smile; that they don’t have to always be scared. I want to make people feel safe.”

“I see…” Yagi-san mumbled lowly, voice just barely loud enough for Izuku to catch. Then he said in a clearly audible voice, “That is very admirable, Young Midoriya. Would it be too prying if I asked where that reasoning came from?”

Izuku’s mind flashed to all of the times that he’d been bullied for being quirkless and being supposedly powerless, how he had taken the bullying without ever bothering to correct anyone on the fact that he _wasn’t_ powerless. How his past lives have been teaching him what it meant to be the Avatar after that fateful day in which he stumbled on the truth, his entire world having to shift slightly to accommodate it. How he went through the motions of life, only granting out true smiles when he felt they were necessary. How, on occasion, he’d wake up with tears on his face after one of his past lives had let him dream-experience some of their memories, smiles of friends that he didn’t know but yearned for making his chest ache.

“It’s… complicated.” Izuku breathed, eyes dropping back to the cup. “It’s complicated and personal.”

“Then forget that I asked.”

The rest of the afternoon slipped by with Izuku and Yagi-san wandering around the city, talking casually about small things. By the time that Izuku got home, he felt lighter and had to force himself to not accidentally use airbending to lighten himself further. His mother seemed content with his happiness and pressed him why with joyful curiosity. He answered honestly, and was more than a little surprised when his mother managed to wrangle out a promise from him to ask Yagi-san to come over for dinner one night—apparently, she wanted to meet this man that had managed to make Izuku happy.

And, when Izuku went to bed that night, he realized for the first time that he had smiled so much that afternoon that his cheeks hurt.

He went to sleep thinking that it was a good sort of pain.

 

<><><>

 

Safe to say, Yagi-san had been more than a little startled at Izuku’s secondhand proposition, but he had said yes in a flustered sort of way. The resulting dinner a few days later had actually gone surprisingly well. And, before Izuku knew it, Inko had somehow roped the tall man into dropping by at least once a week to eat with them.

It was a surprisingly pleasant change.

 

<><><>

 

The day that Izuku finished cleaning up the beach, he could hardly believe that he had actually managed to do so. He’d forgone running that morning in the hopes of being able to get the last bit cleared since he didn’t have school that day—probably worrying Yagi-san in the process. But standing at the top of the stairs that led down to the beach, seeing clear sand where there had once been mountains of trash…

The outraged grief that had been coiled in his chest at the sight was now nothing but a distant memory—a memory that had been replaced by the light feeling of seeing it no longer tainted with trash.

Slowly, a wide grin split Izuku’s face as the realization of what he’d done actually began to hit him. He couldn’t resist the whoop of joy that escaped him, nor the triumphant way that he punched at the air. If he accidentally called on his airbending to jump a little higher than he normally could on his own, then no one was around to notice.

Feeling as light as air, he leaped down to the beach almost haphazardly, relishing in the fact that the sand was _clean_ , not a speck of trash to be found. Kicking his red shoes off and tugging off his socks by the steps, he raced towards the water, the sand shifting from loose and gritty beneath his toes to compact and mostly solid with water—from his seismic sense sensing everything fuzzily to sensing in a way that made everything slightly wobbly and uncertain in a paradoxically certain way. The ocean water lapped over his bare feet, chilly but retaining enough of the dying summer warmth that it wasn’t uncomfortable. In truth, for the first time that he’d ever set foot in an ocean, it was rather pleasant—not that he’d expected anything less.

For an instant, he had a strong urge to practice his bending, feeling the call of the Ocean Spirit tugging at him with a gentle, excited pull. He shivered at the call, remembering that Nuska had informed him that Tui and La had remained in this plane of being, safely tucked away in their hidden Oasis by Raava and Iluq’s doing all those years ago. So it came as no surprise that La recognized Raava within him and wanted to reconnect despite the physical distance between them.

It took a great force of will to not instantly act upon the call, and instead crouch down, hands dipping into the water in such a way that he could get as much skin contact with it as possible without getting his clothes wet. He switched over to the long forgotten language of the Water Tribes, grateful that Iluq had been patient enough to teach him, and said, “I cannot do so, La… Not today… But one day soon, I promise. Please be patient.”

The only answer that he got was an almost sad retreat of La’s chi, leaving Izuku feeling slightly drained in an unfamiliar way.

He stood up and did his best to shake the feeling off, stepping from the water—he did his best to ignore the way that it very subtly seemed to try to drag him back. He moved far enough away from the water that it wouldn’t brush his feet, making sure that he kept on the firmer sand as he settled into an airbending stance. It took a great deal of effort not to slip into a waterbending one and answer La’s withdrawn call. Slowly, he began to work his way through the more difficult airbending forms that he knew, careful to not let himself accidentally use his bending in the process. He swiftly found that, despite the fact that the sand was harder, it proved to be a challenge to land some of the flips that he had to do with the correct form.

By the time that he noticed that he had an audience, he was sweating and ready to retrieve his bottle of water. Brushing back the curls that had escaped the wolf tail that he had wrangled his hair into, Izuku grinned up at the people standing at the railing that overlooked the beach. He automatically recognized Yagi-san by his height and flare of blond hair. The other two actually made him pause, grin becoming slightly bemused.

Both of them were short, had gray hair, and canes—but only the woman seemed to actually need it. The man was, oddly enough dressed in an old and ill-fitting hero costume of various shades of yellow, the length of the cape hinting at the fact that he had probably been taller when it had been made. The woman, on the other hand, was dressed in comfortable looking casual clothes as she leaned on her cane, the deep blue color of her shirt nearly black. Something about her niggled at his memory, but he just couldn't place why.

Izuku was highly aware of their gazes locked on him as he jogged to the stairs, not even pausing to snag his shoes and socks as he leaned down to effortlessly grab them. He didn’t realize that there was a wide smile still on his face until he had raced up the stairs. He stopped at the top, gesturing to the beach with a swift and excited motion that nearly had a sock flying from a shoe.

“I did it, Yagi-san!” Izuku exclaimed, that light feeling returning to his body as he bounced on the balls of his feet. “I cleaned the beach!”

“I can see that, Young Midoriya.” Yagi-san smiled back, amusement clear in his voice and on his face. Only from having gotten to know him did Izuku know that it was _fond_ amusement; not the man just laughing at him internally to be cruel. “Very good.”

By this point Izuku was beaming, the positive words only making the light feeling that much greater. If he wasn’t careful, he knew that he would accidentally use his airbending. Maybe he should calm down some. If he could, that is.

“Is he always this excitable?” The old man asked rather gruffly, and Izuku blinked down at him in remembrance. Dark eyes were regarding him in a way that instantly had him start to sober from his victory and happiness high.

“I think that it’s kinda cute,” the woman chuckled warmly, her eyes flashing to Yagi-san mischievously. “It kinda reminds me of someone else when they were young.”

“Young Midoriya, these two were my mentors many years ago: Shimura Nana and Gran Torino,” Yagi said almost hastily as if he was trying to keep the woman that he had identified as Shimura Nana from spilling something embarrassing. Considering he had just said that the two had been his mentors, that was highly likely.

“Ah!” Izuku instantly offered a small bow, ignoring the feeling that he should know the name of the woman. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Shimura-san, Gran Torino-san. My name is Midoriya Izuku.”

“At least this one has manners…” Gran Torino-san mumbled under his breath as Izuku straightened. The boy caught a subtle glance in Yagi-san’s direction that Izuku mentally took note of.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you too, Midoriya-kun,” Shimura-san said kindly in a way that reminded Izuku distantly of his grandmother when he was younger. “Toshi-kun—” Yagi-san _spluttered_ “—has told us in passing that you have interest in being a hero. At first, I didn’t believe him, then I saw that display down there. Where did you learn how to move like that?”

 _Crap._ Izuku mentally grimaced even as he shifted on his feet shyly, looking down. “I, um… I like to analyze heroes, which includes not only their quirks but also their fighting styles. From there, I’ve also done some analysis including fighting styles in general and then do my best to incorporate them into some of my physical training exercises.”

“You mean that you’ve never actually been taught how to fight?” Gran Torino barked out, gaze suddenly far more intense and interested than the prior instance in which Izuku met it. Instantly, Izuku kept his gaze steady, much like he did frequently with Bakugou.

“No, I haven’t,” Izuku said, tilting his head slightly. “It’s just my mom and myself, we don’t exactly have the money for me to go out and learn from someone—regardless of what Dad sends us. So I’ve made do with what I can. The only thing that I was taught how to do was chi-blocking, and the person that taught me decided to do so on a whim—I didn’t ever get a chance to ask them their reasoning either. Why?” _Not a complete lie, since I’ve only been taught how to use martial art forms for bending, and chi-blocking really was just a spur of the moment sort of instruction._

“You move like you have formal training, that’s why.” Was the gruff response, which earned a blink from Izuku.

“Really?”

“Yes really.” Shimura-san smiled, looking up at Yagi-san in a way that seemed to pass a message between them. Whatever that message was, it made Yagi-san seem to relax even as a solemn expression fell onto his face. When she looked back at Izuku, her own face was serious. “Midoriya-kun, what do you know about quirk inheritance?”

 _That’s a weird question…_ Izuku frowned slightly, but answered, “That someone can inherit one or both quirks from their parents as one quirk; a quirk that is a mutation of their parents; some form of combined quirks from their paternal or maternal sides that is dependent upon quirks skipping generation; or that a quirk could be completely different from anyone in the family. Why?”

“What if I told you that there was a quirk that is guaranteed to be passed down—regardless of a person’s blood relation to the owner?” Shimura-san pressed and Izuku actually stared at her.

“I… Suppose it’s possible. As far as I know, there’s not been a recorded quirk that can do that—but that’s based upon the fact that it would have to have been _recorded_ in the first place.” Izuku returned with a thoughtful frown, a strange sensation of unease churning in his stomach. “I would suspect that such a quirk would be kept as secret as possible due to the likelihood of getting harassed to have it passed down to the harasser next. Especially, if it happened to be considered a powerful quirk… But why is this hypothetical significant?”

“Because it’s not a hypothetical, Young Midoriya.” Yagi-san drew his attention, and Izuku registered the apologetic expression on his face. “Such a quirk exists.”

Izuku merely blinked at the tall man. Slowly, pieces started to fit together, partially forming a solution to a puzzle that still wasn’t quite finished. Even the not stated pieces of information began to clue him in—the silence and gaps provided from carefully worded answers providing more information than they were meant to.

“You’re not quirkless, are you,” Izuku said softly after a long moment, his green eyes locked on Yagi-san face. “Or at least not anymore.”

“No, not anymore,” Yagi-san said just as softly as Izuku closed his eyes for a moment, letting that new information sink in. When he opened them, he temporarily ignored Shimura-san and Gran Torino-san to nod at Yagi-san slightly, the man’s shoulders easing of tension some more—as if he had been afraid that Izuku would have rejected him for lying. Only, now the tall blonde glanced around to make sure that no one but them was nearby. “I apologize for lying, Young Midoriya. However, I will make the reason for my deception known now. All that I ask is for you to not panic.”

 _Panic? Why would I pan—what the?!_ Izuku’s jaw dropped as, without any warning, Yagi-san _inflated_. Where his shirt had been partially hanging off his form, it was now hugging his torso to reveal sharply defined muscles, and his baggy cargo pants no longer looked so baggy. Heck, even his hair somehow managed to become more tamed. But what really got Izuku was how his face changed subtly: slightly squarer jaw and a deep set to his eyebrows…

Izuku _knew_ that face.

Yagi-san was All Might.

 _Yagi-san_ was _All Might._

Izuku had been hanging out with All Might for the past few months and didn’t even know it.

He buried his face in his hands as a new thought came to mind and managed to work past his lips as something that was akin to a whine, “My mom managed to strong-arm All Might into coming over for dinner. What even is my life?”

Then, as All Might’s hand reached out to gently and hesitantly ruffle his hair, Izuku’s brain seemed to glitch with one stray thought:

_All Might used to be quirkless._

Izuku had to force himself to stop thinking, taking deep breaths and smoothing out his chi as he almost instinctively began to reach out for earth, water, and air—he _really_ didn’t need any bending accidents right now. He swallowed, glancing at the elder pair of mentors before looking at All Might. He let out a slightly shaky exhale that was mixed with the question: “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because,” All Might said, his voice not as booming as it normally was, “if you accept, I would like for you to be the next wielder of the quirk that I currently hold: One For All.”

Despite the fact that he was looking at All Might’s face and not Yagi-san’s, Izuku was still able to read him easily from small, micro expressions that made certain parts of the man’s face crease in ways that Izuku, as a giant All Might fan, could clearly spot on All Might’s face. The lines around his signature smile were tighter, as if it was more strained than normal. Said lines complemented the tiny, worried crease that dug a shallow furrow between his eyebrows. The way his eyes crinkled wasn’t quite right either, too forced.

“Why me?” Izuku asked, voice practically a whisper. He already had a torch that had unwillingly been thrust upon him through some decision of fate; a torch that had the literal weight of the world resting on his shoulders. He couldn’t understand why he was picked for that one, but maybe he could figure out the reasoning behind this one. “What makes _me_ so special?” And it might have been the fact that he had been lonely for so long or that he had, somewhere deep down, begun to believe in what his peers said, but he breathed, “I’m just a quirkless Deku…”

Almost immediately, Izuku wanted to take his words back, his mouth tasting bitter for having even said them. Through his seismic sense, he felt All Might tense, and he tore his gaze away, refusing to meet sky-colored eyes. All Might’s hand shifted down to his shoulder, his other giant one moving to Izuku’s other shoulder. They rested there lightly, practically swallowing his shoulders and feeling as if they weren’t actually as heavy as he knew they were.

“Izuku.” Instantly, Izuku’s eyes snapped to All Might, seemingly forgetting his internal refusal to look at the hero at the use of his given name—because _All Might_ had just used _his_ given name. Warm blue eyes gazed at him in a way that made Izuku relax some. “You’re special because of that heart of yours. I’ve seen enough of who you are and talked to you enough to know that you have a good heart—one that belongs to a hero. You being quirkless doesn’t change that. And whatever names you have been called in the past doesn’t change that either.”

Izuku’s breath shook from the tears that he was forcibly struggling to keep from leaking from his eyes—nope, too late, his cheeks were already wet. Through his slightly blurry sight, he saw a startled and somewhat panicked expression flitting onto All Might’s face. So he offered a bright, watery smile in consolation.

He had needed to hear that—he had needed to hear a reason instead of finding himself thrust into the deep end of a pool of power that he had been given without any instruction on how to swim with it.

 _Is that why you picked me, Raava? Because of my heart?_ Izuku mentally asked, reaching as far as he dared into his chi to ask the question. A barely there, feminine hum buzzed at the back of his mind with a small bubble of warmth flaring in his chest in response.

“Young Midoriya?” Again, there was that slight uncertainty, this time phrased as a direct question. A question that would alter Izuku’s future in some form depending on how he answered.

Izuku sniffed, wiping his face of his tears as best as he could. With a nod, his smile morphed into a slightly shy grin. “I accept.” All Might’s own smiled brightened, and his giant hands squeezed Izuku’s shoulders in what the boy recognized as happiness. “I, uh, do have two questions…”

“Ask away, my boy.” All Might pulled away, and Izuku almost immediately missed the slightly parental way that the hands had felt while on his shoulders.

“One: how does the whole transfer thing work,” Izuku said, raising a finger and saw Shimura-san snicker and Gran Torino-san smirk out of his peripherals. The reaction made him more than a little nervous about the answer even as he forged on. “And two: how do I explain to my mom that I got a quirk—let alone one like One For All? Mutations happen, sure, but no one on either side of my family have quirks that would be considered _strong_ —not even my father’s fire breathing is all that effective.”

All Might very obviously looked in Shimura-san’s direction with a softer version of his trademarked laugh. “Don’t worry, Young Midoriya, we’ve already thought about such a thing as well as a way to address it.”

“‘We’?” Shimura-san repeated, humor in her voice. One of her eyebrows rose in a half questioning, half accusing manner. “What ‘we’? I did all the heavy lifting for the two of you—who, may I remind you, did nothing.”

 

<><><>

 

As it turned out, Shimura-san already had a plan in mind on how to handle Izuku’s mother. Which had resulted in a rather interesting meeting because, apparently, Shimura Nana had been a Pro Hero before a nearly fatal injury took her off the hero scene by stripping her of her ability to walk without some form of assistance. And, she had apparently been Inko’s favorite hero when she was younger. So it took a little before the situation calmed down, with Yagi-san—no longer as All Might—, Gran Torino, Shimira-san, and the two Midoriyas sitting at the table with tea.

Izuku shifted anxiously on the slightly rickety folding chair that he was sitting on. He glanced at Shimura-san as she and Inko exchanged pleasant conversation. It took Yagi-san fidgeting next to him and Gran Torino snorting to actually focus on the conversation through his nerves. Almost immediately, he wished that he hadn't.

They were talking about physical altercations.

“Yes, I can understand that feeling,” Inko glanced at Izuku, who blinked back, completely lost. A smile curved her lips upwards. “I know that Izuku is much the same way, but he doesn’t tell me about it. I think he does it so I don't worry.”

“In my defense, I never _started_ those fights, Shishou…” Yagi-san said earnestly, if not a little sheepishly. “Ended them, yes. But I never started them.”

When all eyes turned to Izuku he held up his hands innocently, palms facing them and eyes wide. “I’ve never started a fight in my life—argumentative or physical. It’s not my fault that I know how to dodge the very obvious punches that most of my peers throw.”

“Which, as I’ll remind you, is how Nakamura-san ended up breaking his hand,” Inko said, her green eyes sharp with the reminder.

“The fact that he was throwing a punch hard enough to break his hand at my face is just as concerning considering I have _no idea_ what I did to antagonize him. The fact that he broke his hand from punching the wall that his friend with enhanced strength had shoved me up against shouldn’t have gotten _me_ in trouble.” Izuku countered, crossing his arms. He did his best to ignore the shift of surprise that went through the room from the three guests. “Instead, I got detention for a month even though all that I did was dodge Nakamura’s punch and then get a black eye from his friends for trying to help. They didn’t put it on my record, but still…”

“I am curious, when was this exactly?” Shimura-san asked, her voice polite in a way that instantly had Izuku slightly worried for a reason that he couldn’t identify. The gleam in the old woman’s eyes didn’t help the feeling either.

“Two years ago… Why?” Izuku answered in a slightly hesitant voice.

“No reason.” Shimura-san grinned widely at him, her face becoming serious. “Anyways, Inko-chan—” Izuku blinked, had he really been that wrapped up in his nervous thoughts that he had missed the way that Shimura-san was speaking to his mother? “—what do you know about inheriting quirks?”

Izuku nearly choked on air, the pipes creaking almost imperceptibly as he accidentally pulled on the water within them briefly. They were going to tell his mother the truth of One For All and that he was chosen as the next successor? There was no telling how his mom would take that.

“That children most often inherit similar quirks to that of their parents or family members, even if they are a little altered. Why?” Inko blinked in surprise at the sudden change in topic. Apparently, she could tell that something was up even if she couldn’t tell what.

“True, but as expected of evolution, there are outliers,” Shimura-san stated simply, shifting her weight on her chair, something telling Izuku that she was uncomfortable; hidden under the table, his hands twitched with the urge to see why with bending. “One such outlier came into existence at the beginning of quirks: a quirk that the user could pass on to another willingly. This particular quirk could be passed, much like a torch, to whomever the current wielder willingly gave it to.”

Inko’s brows furrowed in confusion. “Considering what quirks can do, a quirk like that isn’t all that far-fetched. However, I fail to see why me knowing about it is relevant. Even if I know about this quirk, the likelihood of me ever encountering it is very slim.”

“It’s relevant because Toshinori is the current wielder of this quirk, and before him, I held it.” In a flash, Inko’s eyes darted towards Yagi-san with mixed feelings in her gaze as Izuku barely restrained the urge to gawk at Shimura-san. “And, before you say it, he didn’t exactly lie to you about being quirkless. Before he gained the quirk, he _was_ quirkless.”

Because Izuku knew his mother almost as well as he knew thirty-two of the thirty-five airbending forms, he recognized the moment that it all clicked in Inko’s head. The fact that Inko’s green eyes identical to his own practically flew to Izuku and then flickered to Yagi-san further cemented his observation. Her lips were slightly parted in surprise.

“You want to give it to Izuku.” Inko’s voice was surprisingly steady, a new and intense light flaring to life in her eyes that made Izuku glad that she had now turned fully to Yagi-san. “Why?”

“As you may have guessed, I am actually a Pro Hero, but I can’t be one forever,” Yagi-san said evenly and sincerely, blue eyes meeting green. His left hand lifted to press against his left side. “A few years ago, I received a rather… large reminder of that; one which should have been debilitating, and was until I happened upon someone who helped me. However, despite having been helped, what had happened made me realize that finding a successor was critical.

“Then I happened upon your son.” Yagi-san turned his head towards Izuku with a slightly crooked smile. There was an amused fondness in his eyes because Inko didn’t know about the first time that they’d met—then again, Yagi-san didn’t seem to know that Izuku was the one to heal him, which was probably a good thing right now. “Honestly, I was curious about him due to a few contacts that I have and hero gossip, but I didn’t actually know that it was him until he finally gave me his name. Before that, I got to know him in bits and pieces, finding that he was a good kid with a good heart and even bigger dreams.

“But it wasn’t until this last month that I decided to choose your son.” Yagi-san looked at Inko, looking solemn as he did so. “He has the heart of a hero and the drive to be one. When I was his age, I may have said that I wanted to be the hero that I am, but I didn’t take it to the level that Young Midoriya has. I believe that he should be the one to inherit my quirk. While I already have Young Midoriya’s answer, I would also like for your blessing before giving him the quirk.”

Inko stared at Yagi-san for a long moment, her face unreadable. Then she turned to Izuku. “Izuku, I already know what your answer was, and I know how much you want to be a hero. But this sounds as if it will be a large responsibility. Are you positive about your decision?”

 _Oh, mom, if only you actually_ knew _. This is nothing compared to being the Avatar—I’m working on a timer that Nuska won’t tell me when it will end._ Izuku thought, not really all that surprised that his mother was focusing on that particular part as responsibility was always the area that people seemed to assume that he never thought about—especially when it came down to heroes. “I am mom.”

“Then, despite the fact that you did it out of order, I give you my blessing, Yagi-san.” Inko pinned Yagi-san down with her eyes, suddenly looking more fierce than her slightly rounded features had any right to be. “However, I suggest that you make sure that he can safely use that quirk before the time comes for the Yuuei practical exam.”

“Rest assured, I will do my best.” Yagi-san dipped his head low in his best approximation of a bow while he was sitting in a chair. “I also thank you.”

“Now,” Inko’s voice slipped from the serious and heavy tone into a lighter and more curious one, “you mentioned that you were a hero. Care to tell me which one?”

“Ah…” Yagi-san fidgeted nervously, glancing in a random direction so he could avoid all eye contact for a moment. “Well, you see…”

“Just stand up and inflate already, you giant idiot.” Gran Torino-san barked in a slightly irritable and impatient fashion.

“Yes, sir.” Yagi-san jolted the smallest amount in order to get to his feet, Shimura-san rolling her eyes at the slightly stilted reaction. He stepped away from the table, making sure that he had enough room before he planted his feet in a spot. “Please don’t freak out, Midoriya-san.”

Inko’s face drew together in confusion, just as put off by the request as Izuku had been. Izuku watched his mother when Yagi-san did as Gran Torino-san had instructed, a strange sound hissing into the air. Inko squeaked at the suddenness of the transformation, hands flying up to cover her mouth. Where Yagi-san had been standing now stood All Might in all his glory, still looking a little nervous as he smiled broadly.

Inko’s mouth opened and closed a few times before her eyes shifted to Izuku questioningly. He immediately shook his head, able to read from her gaze what question she was silently asking. “I just found out barely an hour ago.”

“Oh… That's… Oh…” Inko breathed behind her fingers, looking shocked at the realization that she had inadvertently been talking and having dinner with All Might for a few weeks. There was the smallest dusting of pink on her cheeks that Izuku didn't understand, but cataloged away to examine later. Suddenly, the shocked expression melted into something more like thoughtful concern. “I do have one question, what are the risks involving Izuku receiving your quirk? Also, what does it mean for you?”

If Izuku didn't know Yagi-san so well, he might have missed the way his smile tightened with something like a grimace.

“For the first question, since Young Midoriya is physically strong enough that his body can at least handle low percentages of it, nothing should happen.” All Might said slowly, the phrasing making Izuku want to press the matter further later. “As for the second, after I pass on the quirk to him I will still retain some of the power, but it will have a limit. Once that power is used up… I will return to how I was before I received it.”

_Quirkless._

Izuku felt his throat tightened as he stared at All Might with wide eyes. He knew that if All Might no longer had One For All, he would be quirkless. Which meant…

All Might’s time as a hero would _end_.

It would end because Izuku, who was too scared to use his bending, had pretended that he was powerless, and had begun to believe his own lie. Because Izuku had accepted a chance to no longer be quirkless even though he had power already. Because he didn't want to lie about having a quirk when he didn't have one.

“I see,” Inko said softly, making it clear that she too had pieced together what had been left unsaid in regards to the second answer. “So, how does the transfer actually work?”

Shimira-san gave a wide grin as All Might looked a little sheepish. The old woman took up the conversation with humor written plainly on her face. “The current user must willingly wish to give up One For All—which is the quirk—to the recipient. However, the recipient can only receive One For All by ingesting some of the current holder’s DNA, with a few hours delay before it makes itself useable.” The woman smirked. “I gave Toshi-kun a hair, but it can also be done with blood.”

Izuku swore that his brain glitched at the new information, struggling to compute it as he tried to make sense of it all. He had to _eat_ All Might’s hair or swallow some of his blood. A part of him shuddered at that thought while another decided to draw upon a fact that he'd learned in science class: blood didn't have DNA. It took him a moment to realize that he had spoken aloud by the looks that he was receiving.

“Ah, sorry.” Izuku sheepishly ducked his head, doing his best not to start muttering again. He really needed to get that under control since he was prone to muttering in not only Japanese but also in the five, long-dead languages of the Elemental Nations. “But blood doesn't have DNA, we just learned that in class about a month ago. Maybe the transfer is tied to some universal factor that we haven't yet discovered or acknowledged by science?”

“That’s possible,” Shimura-san admitted, still looking amused. “We can't say that we know everything about the world, let alone everything about how quirks work.”

“Are we doing this now, or are we doing this later? I have things to do.” Gran Torino-san spoke in a gruff voice after a long few moments where everyone was in their own thoughts.

“Stop lying, Sorahiko.” Shimura-san rolled her eyes playfully. “All that you have to do is eat taiyaki and sleep.”

Izuku found himself looking questioningly at All Might, wondering what was about to happen with nerves fluttering in his stomach.

All Might sighed softly, in a barely noticeable way, before offering an almost blinding smile, a large hand rising to his long, gravity-defying bangs.

 _I guess we're doing this now_. Izuku thought, entire body feeling jittery as All Might plucked a hair from his bangs. This was going to be interesting…

 

<><><>

 

After Izuku swallowed the hair that All Might gave him—a thought that was just as weird in his head as it had been when it happened—his mother had finally shooed him off to get a shower. Which found him almost idly waterbending some of the water in order to more quickly rinse and dry himself off afterward. By the time that he got out of the bathroom in clean clothes, All Might had shrunk back down into Yagi-san and looked slightly embarrassed as Shimura-san spoke with Inko. Gran Torino had a bored, slightly amused expression on his face.

The relief on Yagi-san’s face when he saw Izuku was almost palpable. He practically jumped to his feet. The reason for both being explained a moment later by Izuku hearing the tail end of an embarrassing story from when he was six followed by a short few words on them all going out to lunch—Yagi-san’s treat.

Surprisingly, Izuku found himself enjoying the short outing even as he felt his chi begin to strangely _itch_ the smallest amount—not enough to truly bother him, but it was enough that in the few times where there was a lull in the conversation he could tell that it was itching. Shimura-san was able to produce a friendly air that was able to override the gruffness of Gran Torino the few times that he bluntly said things. Yagi-san was, well, _Yagi-san_ , and was just as comfortable to be around now as he had been before they knew he was All Might. Inko relaxed into talking with Shimura-san easily enough as Izuku mostly talked with Yagi-san and Gran Torino-san, the two men listening when he managed to go off on accidental tangents with patient interest.

By the time that they were finishing off their respective lunches, Izuku found that he didn't want it to end.

Well, a part of him.

The other part of him wanted it to end because his chi was itching within his body furiously, having grown more persistent to the point that he couldn’t ignore it as easily. The itching trying to make itself known as it caused him some discomfort. Mostly, he just wanted to try and calm the itching sensation with meditation or going through bending forms to burn off the desire to fidget.

They were leaving the establishment that they’d gone to for lunch, still talking to each other when Izuku felt the itching stop. It was sudden and relieving in a way that he hadn’t expected until his chi _shifted_. It momentarily took his breath away and, for a split instant, something white fuzzed the edges of his sight almost threateningly. At the back of his mind, thousands of thoughts swirled in preparation in a defensive manner, ready to surge forwards at a moments notice.

Then the white was gone and his chi was calm, threading through his body in a familiar, soothing way.

A soothing way that now danced with eight other impressions of chi’s in a harmonious whirl of energy within himself that seemed to buzz from the sheer intensity of it—

“Young Midoriya?”

Izuku blinked, jolting back to his surroundings sharply at Yagi-san’s voice. He realized that he had stopped walking and was now a few steps away from the four adults who were looking at him curiously and questioningly. He opened his mouth to say something only to realize that he had no idea what to say. Instead, he shook his head and swiftly closed the gap between him and the adults. He was hyper aware that Yagi-san’s eyebrows were drawn down slightly and the way that Shimura-san and Gran Torino-san were looking at him with an unnerving level of intensity in their gazes—Gran Torino-san had even shifted almost protectively to stand between Izuku’s general direction and the two women of the group. Something had happened that the three had caught and that Inko had missed, but Izuku had no clue what it could have been. All that he knew was that it had to have been subtle otherwise his mother would have reacted as well.

“What was that, my boy?” Yagi-san asked in a lower voice when Izuku returned to his position beside him. “Your gaze was unfocused for a few seconds.”

“I… Honestly, I don’t know…” Izuku said after a moment, looking up at Yagi-san with confusion on his face. Instincts told him that the white that had filled his peripherals with the accompanying thousands of thoughts was something dangerous and not to be treated with any sort of levity. So he focused on the one thing that he could actually place: the new way that his chi buzzed throughout his body. “I feel… buzzy? Is that a word?”

“Then it was probably just it settling…” Yagi-san hummed just loud enough for Izuku to hear. Izuku’s eyes widened in realization.

“Oh…” 

“You said you feel buzzy?” Shimura-san threw back, something unreadable in her eyes when Izuku’s emeralds locked with them.

“Yes,” Izuku nodded, struggling for a moment to figure out how to better describe it. “Almost like someone just shot me full of energy.” He had to force his hands not to twitch lest he accidentally lost control of his suddenly more potent chi and used his bending by accident. The more that he thought about the bolstering effect of the eight other impressions of chis he could sense mixing with his own, the more prominent the buzzing became. “It’s actually kinda distracting.”

“I advise that, for now, you don’t try to mess with that ‘buzzy’ feeling,” Shimura-san explained, earning a blink of slight confusion from Izuku. “The fact that you feel buzzy means that your body still needs to properly adjust. If you don’t wait for your body to grow acclimated, you’ll hurt yourself. Badly.”

“Yes, Shimura-san.” Izuku nodded, already aware that having one’s chi messed with could alter things drastically and possibly in a dangerous way. That didn’t mean that he wouldn’t very carefully test out his bending. He was worried that it might be affected by this new quirk. “I won’t mess with it.”

“Good, boy.” Shimura-san smiled widely, gesturing for him to come closer. When she motioned for him to kneel, Izuku did so with more than a little confusion. “I’ve heard that you want to be a hero to protect people’s smiles.”

“It’s part of my reason why, yes,” Izuku said, flicking his eyes away bashfully.

Suddenly, she reached out and pulled at his face, forcing a smile onto it by pulling his lips until they curled upwards some. He only narrowly resisted the urge to pull away because she was actually pinching his cheeks some, but a squawk still escaped him regardless. His gaze had flown back to her at the action, a startled question in their green depths.

“Then you need to remember this, bean sprout,” Shimura-san grinned at him in a way that still managed to convey a level of seriousness that surprised Izuku slightly. “Saving a person’s life is important, but saving a person’s heart is just as important. If you want to save someone’s smile, you’ll have to be willing to protect or save their heart as well. Which means that, even when things get tough, you’ll have to wear a smile to show them how to do so themselves. In that way, the people in this world who can smile are the strongest. You got that?”

As Shimura-san had talked, she had let Izuku’s cheeks go, leaving the boy to merely look at her with wide eyes at her short speech. At the question, he slowly blinked as he processed her words before a blinding grin blossomed on his face. “Got it, Shimura-san!”

 

<><><>

 

“You felt it too then.” Nana looked over at Sorahiko, not bothering to ask what he meant as he, Toshinori, and she walked towards the train station. They had separated from the two Midoriyas not that long ago—but not before sharing their numbers with the both of them. Nana had noticed that Izuku’s phone had a distinct lack of contacts that actually made her heart pang a little—the sweet boy that she had somewhat gotten to know over the course of the morning apparently didn’t have any friends. “When the boy stopped dead on the sidewalk.”

“Yes.” Nana nodded solemnly, feeling something within her squirm in an unsettled way as she recalled the very brief surge of power that had seemed to pulse from the boy. It had been so brief that, had she not been as attuned to her surroundings as she was, she would have missed it. She looked up at her former student—practically her son after all these years. “Are you sure that he doesn’t have a quirk, Toshinori?”

“Positive. He doesn’t have an active Alpha Plus gene _and_ has the toe joint; the likelihood of him actually activating one is so slim that it might as well be impossible.” Toshinori said, a frown pulling his lips down the smallest amount. “They admitted to checking to see if the Gene has activated every time when he goes to his yearly check-up as a precaution. Every test has turned out the same: negative.”

“Could it just be a very strong reaction to the transition?” Sorahiko pressed with a frown of his own. “From what I’ve discovered, he’s a bit more ‘spiritually inclined’ despite the fact that he also seems to have a good grasp on science—especially that which pertains to quirks. If so, then he could have reacted to the impressions.”

“It is… possible…” Toshinori admits, that troubled expression in his eyes prompting Nana to lightly rap his leg with her cane briefly. She lifted an eyebrow in a silent question. “Since I was the first to notice that he had lagged behind, I managed to turn around in time to see something. It was very brief and wasn’t something overly obvious, but it… it set me on edge for a reason that I can’t explain.”

“What did you see, Toshi?” Nana pressed, suddenly concerned. Had Toshinori made a mistake in choosing his successor?

“His pupils were white,” Toshinori said rather seriously. “They were white and glowing the smallest amount.”

Nana continued to gaze up at Toshinori, reading his expression easily due to having seen him grow from that overly ambitious boy by the river spouting his heart out to her about a symbol of peace into said Symbol of Peace. The lines on his face that came from constantly smiling while on duty were pulled tight in a way that they didn’t easily comply to. The only time she could recall him ever really having that look was when All For One was involved in a conversation.

“There’s something else on your mind.” Sorahiko further pressed, also able to sense that Toshinori had something else to say.

“For whatever reason, I don’t think that it was related to quirks,” Toshinori said slowly, uncertainly. “It’s difficult to explain why I think that, and I don’t fully understand it myself, but his eyes glowing that little bit… it was something else. I just don’t know what that something else was. The only thing that I do know is that, whatever it was, well, it’s _powerful_.”

“Then we’ll have to wait and find out,” Nana said calmly. “It seems as if the boy doesn’t even know about it, which may turn out to be dangerous for all involved.”

“I was already planning on it.” Sky colored eyes turned down to Nana. “I won’t let him hurt himself or others by accident.”

“Good. Now,” Nana shifted the atmosphere around them into something less serious and more playful with a smirk, “care to explain why Inko-chan blushed when you inflated.”

Nana’s smirk only grew when Toshinori suddenly became flustered, his face blushing from the neck up as he spluttered some excuse that she barely listened to, already knowing that it was nothing more than a hastily constructed lie. The first time that she’d gotten this type of reaction had been back when he was a teenager and had been struggling with his sexual identity. The last had been back when he’d frantically called her via video chat in a panic that he had a crush on someone he was working with when he was in America—it had both been worth the three in the morning wake-up call and not worth it. Granted, any sort of mentioning of anything considered socially unacceptable to casually mention in public regarding sex or another's body got him flustered and unsure. Joy's of being somewhere on the asexual spectrum she figured.

“So, when’s your date?” Sorahiko smirked, instantly understanding what was happening. “Or have you not asked her yet?”

Toshinori basically choked on air, his face turning red at a more rapid pace. Four years ago, such a reaction would have had Toshinori coughing blood and Nana so frustrated at her powerlessness that she would have been internally screaming. Now, he merely floundered for words as Sorahiko continued to tease him goodnaturedly.

 _If only we could find that kid who healed him._ Nana thought, her smirk softening into a warm smile. The hand not gripping her cane pressed against her hip, feeling the hidden metal of the partial exoskeleton that allowed her to walk digging into her palm. _I would love to thank him. He saved Toshi from a life of pain from a crippling injury that would have eventually killed him. Even if he can’t help me, he helped Toshi; that’s all that I care about._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First off, I may tease romance and sexuality (based upon headcanons), but I have no actual plans for any real romantic relationships. There will definitely be some platonic relationships at some point, once the characters get to know each other in this 'verse. Depending on how things go, there may even be queerplatonic relationships.
> 
> Second, this took a lot longer to get out since I was basing it off of progress on the chapter that I am still working on (but is at a decent enough point that I said screw it, posting chapter three). Sorry.
> 
> Finals weeks happened (joy of being an architecture major), then graduation happened, and now I'm fumbling a part-time job while searching for an internship at a firm. I will also admit to having gotten flustered at all of the positive feedback (which made finals weeks not so bad).
> 
> Hope y'all enjoyed!


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